Constructive Psychology 



THE BUILDING OFCHAMCTER 
BYPBRSONALEFFORT 



THE CANONOFPROPORTION 



Br.J.B.Bugk 




Class 



Gopighl N" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



CONSTRUCTIVE PSYCHOLOGY 



CONSTRUCTIVE 
PSYCHOLOGY 

OR 

THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER BY 
PERSONAL EFFORT 



BY 

J. D. BUCK 

AUTHOR OF "MYSTIC MASONRY" AND "A STUDY OF MAN' 



SUPPLEMENTAL HARMONIC SERIES 
VOLUME III 



CHICAGO 

INDO-AMERICAN BOOK CO. 

1908 






UB3ARY of oeRGSESS^ 
Two Copies Receives 

AUG 31 1908 



¥% 



GLASS (X KX&Nu. 
1_l -i O <4 
COPY S« 



Copyright by J. 
1908 



D. Buck 




l'ublished 190S 



WORKS OF J. D. BUCK 



A Study of Man - - - $J.50 
Mystic Masonry - - - i*5Q 

The Genius of Freemasonry - J*00 

Constructive Psychology - - f. 00 



CONTENTS 

Page 

introduction 9 

The Meaning of Life - - - 21 

The Eoad to Knowledge - - 37 

The Growth of the Soul 62 

The Secret of Power 75 

Constructive Psychology - - 99 

Education 135 

Egomania,, and the Superman - - 171 



INTRODUCTION 

The present is a time of immense activity 
and great nnrest. Human nature seems 
stirred to its very depths, as though an all- 
potent ferment had been added to the 
human mass, leaving not an atom nor a 
monad undisturbed. 

Constructive and destructive forces and 
tendencies seem, to the casual observer, 
engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for 
supremacy, and every foot of ground seems 
contested with the energy of despair or the 
determination of triumph. 

Political parties face each other , without 
concession or compromise, in a prize-fight 
for spoils and supremacy. The champions 
who have won first place are surrounded by 
others clamoring for their places, and 
ready to claim the belt and to endeavor to 
hold it against all challengers. 



10 Constructive Psychology 

The seething and noisy human mass rush 
to opposing standards and yell themselves 
hoarse, forgetting in the frenzy of conta- 
gious enthusiasm how they have been 
grouped and whipped into line by their 
trainers and middlemen who held them 
like sheep with the dogs of party strife and 
political expediency, and the epidemic at 
Chicago is only equalled by the cyclone at 
Denver. 

Back of these political champions stand 
the captains of industry, and the autocrats 
of wealth, with one eye on their millions 
grabbed from natural resources and the 
impotency or helplessness of the hungry 
toiling masses, and watching the throw of 
a card or the trend of events, in order to 
grab again from the human hopper in the 
mills of the gods of chance. 

Beneath all this surface turmoil there 
may be distinctly heard an undertone, a 
rumble as of distant thunder, with here 
and there a flash from a distant cloud. It 
is the cry, the groan, the unrest of the toil- 



Introduction 11 

ing masses, resentful at the inequality and 
injustice that everywhere oppress them. 
They are determined to die rather than 
submit. 

They are not counted in the race, but the 
champions on either side undertake to con- 
ciliate, and in so doing yield just so much 
as may serve to keep them quiet and expect- 
ant of better conditions, and enable them 
to choose the least of two evils, well know- 
ing that justice is not considered, but only 
expediency, in order that the few may still 
dominate the many, and wealth and power 
and privilege still hold place. 

From time immemorial this has been the 
history of statecraft, priestcraft, politics. 
But never before in the history of man has 
enlightenment, education and intelligence, 
with the resulting spirit of Liberty and the 
demand for common Justice, been so gener- 
ally diffused among the toiling masses as in 
the United States today. 

The masses have always held the balance 
of power, but they did not realize it. If 



12 Constructive Psychology 

they undertook to co-operate and use their 
power, statecraft, princecraft or priest- 
craft contrived to throw an apple of dis- 
cord into their midst, dividing them into 
hostile factions or fanatical partisans, and 
while they were destroying each other the 
autocrat retired to smoke his pipe of peace 
in safety. 

Socialism, however defined, means today 
that the masses are drawing nearer togeth- 
er, waking from the lethargy and dumb 
sleep of ages, and beginning to hold togeth- 
er and to sense the principle and the neces- 
sity of co-operation and solidarity. They 
are getting ready to make common cause 
against all their oppressors. They need 
only the nucleus in order to crystallize the 
idea, or a Peter the Hermit to rouse them 
to enthusiasm or fanaticism that will sweep 
away all opposition. 

To call these natural instincts and this 
innate sense of common justice "Anarchy" 
only helps their cause. The effort to label 
the demand for a square deal and fair play 



Introduction 13 

' ' Indecent, ' ' as is done in the cowardly and 
contemptible "Penrose Bill," sneaked in 
under cover of an " appropriation" near 
the close of the last Congress, can have but 
one effect, viz.: of deepening the sense of 
injustice and multiplying resentment on 
every hand, and only hastening the day of 
deliverance or retribution. 

The politicians doubtless think they 
"turned a clever trick." If there were 
statesmen in the last Congress, and cer- 
tainly there were some, they well knew that 
Nemesis is tacked on to the Penrose Bill, 
as the Bill itself was tacked on to an " ap- 
propriation. " They dare not do openly 
what they seek to do by fraud and trickery, 
and the head of the Postoffice Department 
will scarcely avoid responsibility by com- 
mitting the execution of the "Law" to the 
passion, caprice or partisanship of the local 
postmaster. They all fail to take into ac- 
count the increased intelligence of the 
masses, as a whole. 

Passing from these surface indications 



14 Constructive Psychology 

and open public issues to the status of the 
individual, the units that compose the mass, 
Constructive Psychology may do for the 
individual what Socialism in its strictest 
constructive sense and most scientific and 
philosophical form may do for the masses. 

It will enable them to apprehend and 
utilize their inherent faculties, capacities 
and powers and so to make the best of their 
opportunities as intelligent, rational and 
free men and women. 

The evolution of the individual and the 
constructive solidarity of society are insep- 
arable. 

It is important, above all things, to find 
the lines of least resistance, greatest prog- 
ress and permanent results. 

No new theory is herein proposed. A 
different grouping of facts, the pointing 
out of things already familiar, with their 
natural sequence and co-ordinate relations, 
is all that is in any sense new, or herein 
attempted. 

What co-operation and fraternal consid- 



Introduction 15 

eration will do for any group of individ- 
uals in securing the highest good to all con- 
cerned, Constructive Psychology will do 
for each individual through the recognition 
of his own resources and by enabling him 
to utilize them so as to secure the highest 
and best results, both for himself and for 
any community of which he is a part. In 
other words, Constructive Sociology and 
Constructive Psychology are one. The 
building of individual character and the 
upbuilding of society in the highest and 
best sense are inseparable. 

These basic principles are not abstruse 
and difficult to understand, though they go 
to the foundation of things and compass all 
life. Like the laws of physical health, they 
are few and simple ; or, like the principles 
of mathematics, concise and definite. 

True, they are hedged about by the spec- 
ulations and the guesswork of ages, and the 
ground pre-empted by "squatter sover- 
eigns" of every age, nation, kindred and 
tongue, the dogmatists in religions having 



16 Constructive Psychology 

the largest paw and the strongest grip, 
while superstition and fear of the unseen 
and unknown serve as a bugaboo to pre- 
vent the children of men from peacefully 
claiming and using their Natural and 
Divine heritage. 

If anyone attempts to do this, he is met 
at the border of the domain of thought with 
a sign of warning, or a patent of pre-emp- 
tion; and if he steps over the fence he is 
served with a writ of ejectment, with the 
air full of muttered warnings and maledic- 
tions. 

Strenuous indeed must be the struggle 
of the soul for liberty and enlightenment, 
when the intellectual and spiritual domain, 
like the broad acres of the earth, are 
oivned by someone else. 

"The foxes have holes, and the birds of 
the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath 
not where to lay his head." 

The war between radicalism and conserv- 
atism is like that between the two great 
contending political parties in America to- 



Introduction 17 

day. The guns of each party are turned 
against the other, while Truth and Justice 
sit enthroned serenely above them and 
above the din of battle. 

Each of these parties or factions claims 
too much, and denies too much. 

Eepose dwells on the mountain tops 
above the mists and miasmas of the dark 
valleys. Here the soul, at peace with it- 
self, may commune with the silence and 
find Divinity smiling through the starry 
hosts. 

The complexity of human nature and the 
diversity of human interests and pursuits 
are indeed perplexing and often bewilder- 
ing. 

Civilization endowed with intelligence, 
like the present, carries with it the records 
of the past, the lessons of history and a 
very labyrinth of conjecture, theory and 
experiment. 

Meantime, ' ' things settled by long use, if 
not absolutely good, at least fit well to- 
gether.' ' 



18 Constructive Psychology 

But today it is the custom to challenge 
all these things, to overturn and attempt to 
rebuild. In every department of knowl- 
edge these signs are manifest. 

Constructive Psychology turns the 
thoughtful and intelligent individual back 
upon himself and undertakes to make ex- 
ceeding plain those few simple principles 
by which he may adjust himself by per- 
sonal effort and establish harmonious rela- 
tions to God to Nature and to his fellow- 
men. 

He will find no necessity for consulting 
libraries, philosophies, authorities, or the- 
ologies, helpful as these may be at certain 
times or under certain circumstances. He 
will appeal solely to his own intelligence, 
his own conscience and his own experience. 
This is the only source for him of actual 
knowledge. He knows only that which he 
has learned by definite, personal experi- 
ence. 

He is not to be indoctrinated, converted, 
or exploited. He is to undergo continual 



Introduction 19 

transformation. He himself must become 
' 'the builder of the temple/ ' thrown upon 
his own resources, and by personal effort 
must create his own heaven or his own hell, 
with the distinct understanding and unal- 
terable decree, that he must live in the 
house he builds and keep it in constant re- 
pair by eternal vigilance and unremitting 
personal effort. 

Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of 
liberty. Every human being is a slave till 
he has mastered himself. When he has 
achieved this conquest, he is for the first 
time Freeborn. Henceforth no power in 
the three worlds can ever enslave him with- 
out his assent. 

Such building of character means work. 
It has to have a beginning, and the only 
possible initiative is when the individual 
determines to begin now! With his first 
real step in advance, the " Demons of the 
Threshold' ' — superstition and fear — re- 
cede, and at last die. 

There will always be those who will deny 



20 Constructive Psychology 

man's right to this God-given privilege, 
this natural heritage, just as there will al- 
ways be those ready to degrade the sacred 
name of Liberty to license. Every real 
seeker will hold to the middle of the road 
undisturbed by the warnings or the menace 
from either side, though he will be just to 
all. 



THE MEANING OF LIFE 

The most real thing in life with the great 
majority of individuals still is the "strug- 
gle for existence in the midst of a hostile, 
environment. ' ' 

To "make both ends meet"; to maintain 
a bare existence; to "keep the wolf from 
the door," this is the one great problem 
with the great majority of mankind. It 
absorbs all their energies, takes all their 
time, fills them with anxiety and forebod- 
ing, and in a very large number of cases 
poverty, necessity, failure and despair are 
the final result. 

A large proportion of the so-called mid- 
dle class nowadays have passed beyond this 
stage of the struggle for existence, and if 
they have not secured a competency, they 
are quite satisfied that they will "get on" 
and at least hold their own. 

21 



22 Constructive Psychology 

These are not fully aware to what extent 
their success has contributed to the 
anxieties and failures of the "submerged 
increment. ' ' 

Competition and strife by which a fair 
degree of success has been achieved, now 
sometimes assumes another form, that of 
extravagant display and luxury, and this 
often outruns their actual resources and 
leads to bankruptcy or crime, whereupon 
disaster, disgrace, a prison sentence or sui- 
cide results. 

For these the meaning of life is summed 
up in one word — Failure! Kegret, repent- 
ance or remorse can now change nothing; 
they are useless. 

Their aims and ideals have had reference 
solely to outward things, to the conditions 
of life, and not to life itself. 

Wliile the submerged increment have had 
neither time nor opportunity for self-im- 
provement, the more favored often have 
had no real desire for it, have used their 
energies in another direction, and in the 



The Meaning of Life 23 

end are no better satisfied than the first 
class. 

Even where the favored few escape bank- 
ruptcy, failure and crime, their success 
often leads to luxury and dissipation, dis- 
ease and premature death. This is becom- 
ing the rule with the successful ' * four hun- 
dreds 

Scarcely one of these has learned the real 
meaning of life beyond the handwriting on 
the wall — Failure! 

One who, like the physician, follows them 
from maturity to old age, knows how really 
purposeless is their lives, so far as any real 
values are concerned, and what utter 
wrecks they at last become. 

Eeal value to themselves is the point that 
is so often overlooked. They do not seem 
to care what kind of men and women they 
are, so long as they can live in luxury and 
enjoy the pleasures of sense, be counted in 
the "four hundred' ' and keep up the pace. 

Any idea of rewards and punishments 



24 Constructive Psychology 

hereafter no longer appeals to them, and 
needs not be herein considered. 

It is the record made in the present life 
that is being considered, and real values 
(as assets and resources to the individual 
himself) that are being measured. 

These real values are everywhere appre- 
ciated when they are once known, but the 
great majority do not realize that they are 
directly the result of personal effort, no 
less than is the amassing of a fortune or 
success in other lines of effort and enter- 
prise. 

Now the first word in the real meaning of 
life is Opportunity. 

Every young man and young woman 
starting out in life faces a great oppor- 
tunity. 

That the great majority are handicapped 
or restricted, is true, in a certain sense, but 
this restriction is rather external than in- 
ternal, extrinsic rather than intrinsic. 

It all depends upon themselves how they 
face and utilize such opportunities as they 



The Meaning of Life 25 

have, and it is this, more than the extent 
and range of opportunity, that determines 
results. 

If they face the right way, and utilize 
such opportunities as come, they will gen- 
erally find these continually increasing. 

A great majority of successful men and 
women in the world have thus, like Napo- 
leon, "created opportunity' ' and thus con- 
tinually increased their resources, often 
beginning in poverty and obscurity. Just 
here is the grand opportunity of the 
favored few, viz. : to add to the opportuni- 
ties of those less favored by fortune than 
themselves. Many are realizing this, and 
going to work in earnest about it. 

In this way they are increasing their own 
resources for happiness and real, lasting 
success in life as they could not possibly 
do in any other way. They gain enthusi- 
asm and zest in life from the consciousness 
of being useful to mankind, such as the 
greedy and self-indulgent never dreamed of. 

All that any intelligent, fair-minded 



26 Constructive Psychology 

young man or woman has a right to de- 
mand of society is a fair opportunity to try 
for success. 

The society or community that does not 
do its best and its utmost to furnish such 
opportunity is not only derelict in the 
plainest duty, but is sure to pay the penalty 
in pauperage, increase of crime, and reac- 
tion against itself in every form. 

The aggregate wealth, peace, prosperity 
and happiness of any community do not 
depend on an equal division of anything, 
as anarchists and imbeciles interpret or 
misinterpret so-called Socialism. They 
depend on the removal first, of any excuse 
for idleness, injustice and crime. In other 
words, they depend on securing the best 
opportunity for all. 

Special privileges, beyond the mere inci- 
dents of the day's journey, belong to no 
one; and those who demand them, or are 
continually trying to secure them at any 
cost, are not to be envied. 

They know perfectly well, if possessed of 



The Meaning of Life 27 

ordinary intelligence, that they possess or 
are seeking that which does not belong to 
them, that which they have never earned 
and to which they have no right whatever. 

If from the incidents of birth or blind 
fortune they find themselves endowed with 
special gifts, and make no effort to realize 
their increased personal responsibility 
thereby ; if they accept the gifts of fortune 
without its accompanying responsibility, 
they become conceited, egotistic, and degen- 
erate. They invariably fall as much below 
the common level as they imagine them- 
selves to be above it. 

It is these shallow and vain egotists who, 
having little sense of justice and seldom 
any noble motive or high ideal in life, often 
drift into profligacy, dissipation and self- 
indulgence and pay the penalty in paresis 
or insanity. They have demonstrated the 
fact of injustice in the bestowals of blind 
fortune, and proved how little the gift was 
deserved. 

The Law of Use lies back of all these con- 



28 Constructive Psychology 

ditions. We deserve only that which we 
use wisely and justly. 

This is the ' ' parable of the talents, ' ' and 
it falls under a law as exact and uncompro- 
mising as that of gravitation. There is no 
possible way of escaping it. True, one 
may deceive the community, and fool every- 
one for a time except himself. 

The real possessions of every man and 
woman are intrinsic, not extrinsic, and the 
account is at last balanced to the uttermost 
farthing. 

We have only to reflect that all our 
earthly possessions and even the physical 
body are left behind us in the casket, in 
order to realize that none of these things 
are really and intrinsically ours. 

This does not imply the "wordlessness" 
of any of these things, but it does show the 
real meaning of opportunity, and the law of 
use. 

We cannot rightly utilize or increase our 
real possessions, resources, and opportuni- 



The Meaning of Life 29 

ties, without thereby adding to the general 
fund of mankind. 

What we add to the general fund is the 
only measure of our worth to ourselves. 
Freedom to act, individual liberty, is thus 
safeguarded by inexorable law. Individ- 
uals are interdependent, and personal lib- 
erty is the flower and fruit of Personal Be- 
sponsibility. The two are inseparable. 

It is thus that our standard of values is 
established. 

The real evolution of every individual is 
only another name for the building of char- 
acter by personal effort. 
/ The most unhappy person one ever meets 
is the man or woman who is habitually dis- 
satisfied with the world and with himself 
or herself. / 

Even the conceited coxcomb is preferable 
as a companion, shallow and childish as 
may be all his boasted possessions. Self- 
conceit and shallow self-complacency, how- 
ever, are not real content and self-satisfac- 
tion. 



30 Constructive Psychology 

Self-conceit is complacent over an imag- 
ined result. 

Self-satisfaction, in its best sense, repre- 
sents the zest of the soul over the pleasant 
and profitable journey that is being pur- 
sued. 

Self-conceit is like a sloppy rest-house 
at the end of a day's journey. 

Self-satisfaction is real joy over the mile- 
posts passed and enjoyment of the journey 
of today, and the repose and anticipation 
of that of tomorrow, which come at the 
close of every day's journey. 

The great pessimist, Schopenhauer, de- 
clared ennui to be the greatest curse in life. 
Real zest and self-satisfaction must be one 
of the greatest gifts or blessings. Certain- 
ly the father of a family must derive a 
great deal of satisfaction in being able to 
build his home after designs that satisfy 
his sense of use and comfort and his idea of 
beauty. 

The number of persons who can do this 
is but a small proportion of any community 



The Meaning of Life 31 

even where the ambition is modest and the 
tastes simple and reasonable. 

In the building of character, however, by- 
personal effort under noble aims and high 
ideals, no one is restricted or handicapped, 
provided he has the aims and ideals. The 
essential endowments, the primary facul- 
ties, capacities and powers are the same 
with all men and women ; only the aims and 
ideals differ. One builds a cesspool, a hog 
pen or a madhouse, out of the materials 
from which another constructs "love and 
a cottage' ' or "a thing of beauty and a 
joy forever.' ' 
"We shape ourselves, the joys, the fears, 

Of which the coming life is made, 
And fill our future atmospheres 

With sunshine or with shade.' ' 

Probably few persons deliberately design 
to build from low ideals. 

The great majority have no designs at 
all on the trestleboard of life. They just 
drift aimlessly, not realizing what a dis- 
jointed, unsightly and useless habitation 



32 Constructive Psychology 

they are putting together, till old age is 
upon them or death stares them in the face, 
and they also read the writing on the wall 
— Failure — in their own handwriting, j 

It may thus clearly be seen how Life 
means a Great Opportunity and with what 
infinite possibilities every Individual In- 
telligence is endowed by God or Nature, 
handicapped in the building of character 
by personal effort only by his own igno- 
rance or indifference. 

No one, neither God, devil, angel nor 
man, can do the work for us, nor in spite 
of us. In every case we do it ourselves, or 
allow it to do itself, while in each and every 
case we must accept the results and bear 
the consequences. 

This is the responsibility attached to In- 
dividual Intelligence, the meaning of Soul, 
or Selfhood ; the price we must pay for the 
opportunity to become real Men and 
Women — factors in the world's work, cen- 
ters of power in the upward evolution of 
mankind, with the reward of real zest in 



The Meaning of Life 33 

life and enthusiasm throughout the jour- 
ney. 

Can anyone imagine greater endowment 
or opportunity, a richer reward, or a more 
inspiring prospect? 

We have only to contrast it with the 
average life of man or woman, with the 
wrecks and failures seen on every hand, 
with the aimless lives and the paresis, de- 
spair and suicide that brood like demons 
or avenging angels over the Failures. 

The hope of the world lies solely in the 
early education of children along these 
lines; in laying in youth the foundation 
upon which the constructive work of a life- 
time may proceed with no failures along 
the route or at the end. 

Life thus means, first and foremost, a 
Great Opportunity; and success or failure 
is determined by the way we utilize our 
capacities and possibilities. 

We may do this in such a way as contin- 
ually to increase our resources, ennoble our 
ideals, increase our zest in life and con- 



34 Constructive Psychology 

struct a character rounded, complete and 
noble, appreciated by men, approved by 
divinity and giving contentment and satis- 
faction to ourselves. 

Can any one imagine a nobler or more 
real meaning for Life? 

Such a life achieved does not engender 
egotism nor pride of intellect, but it does 
bring a sense of power and selfhood; and 
ability to ' l do things, ' ' and to do them well, 
with zest in the doing of them. 

Too many lives are aimless, colorless, 
virtually useless. The great opportunity 
has been unappreciated, squandered or 
misused. 

The strong and noble man or woman is 
the one who can do the right thing at the 
right time and place, and in the right way. 
When the thing is done everyone whose 
opinion is really worth anything approves 
and applauds it. 

It seems as though the actor had been 
"lying around loose" and "just hap- 
pened' ' to see or think of the opportunity; 



The Meaning of Life 35 

when the truth is, he or she had really been 
training and rehearsing for it for a life- 
time. 

The power to do it was there, whether 
the opportunity ever came or not. 

It is this conscious power, this all-round 
individual development, this kingship of 
the soul, that engenders real self-respect 
and rewards all personal effort for self- 
improvement. 

Life means the opportunity by personal 
effort to build such a character, and the 
real possessor of it will find nothing "in 
the three worlds" to envy. 

He will be filled with gratitude, and 
never debased by pride or self-conceit. 

The aim and object are not to gain power 
over our fellowmen and be able to sway 
and mould them to our wills. 

Just here lies a great gulf. The irre- 
sponsible and conscienceless hypnotist may 
do and often does just that. 

The man with kingly power will do his 
best to increase the opportunity of others 



36 Constructive Psychology 

to help themselves, and in doing this will 
efface himself completely. He would rath- 
er remain entirely unknown in the trans- 
action, rather the one helped should imag- 
ine he had done it all himself, and so to 
realize that he can do it again. 

Where conscious power is real the ap- 
plause of men is not the cause nor source 
of satisfaction. Self -content and real self- 
satisfaction arise from the knowledge that 
the lines upon which we are traveling lead 
forever upward into the light and point 
toward the radiant splendor of eternal day. 



THE ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE 

Using the word ' ' Knowledge ' ' as apply- 
ing to literature, learning, science, philos- 
ophy — in a word, to books — knowledge is 
one thing. Used in the sense of measuring 
the practical and actual resources of the 
individual at any given time knowledge is 
a different thing entirely. 

The multiplicity of knowledge in the first 
sense, nowadays, the endless disputes over 
the so-called philosophies, the diversity 
along the line of speculation, theory and 
hypothesis, have discouraged and finally 
disgusted the great majority of the think- 
ing world, who declare that they will have 
none of it. Their demand is "Give us 
something practical. ' ' 

This result is not only natural, but it has 
evidently had a very practical effect upon 
the philosophers and metaphysicians them- 
37 



38 Constructive Psychology 

selves. They realize, as never before, that 
to study philosophies and theories, as such, 
is one thing, and to add to the resources of 
every intelligent individual, to help him to 
gain possession of his own faculties, capac- 
ities and powers and enable him to utilize 
them to the best possible advantage, is an- 
other thing entirely. 

The result seems to be the apotheosis of 
Common Sense. The mental realm has 
been explored, and the diversified and in- 
genious mind of man has run riot since his- 
tory began. Philosophical systems have 
been created as children put together 
blocks in building toy houses. And if each 
builder of a philosophical house could 
guard it long enough from the hand or foot 
of his nearest neighbor it has been face- 
tiously labeled "This is the house that Jack 

built." 

Haeckel's "Monism" and "Law of Sub- 
stance" may serve as an illustration. The 
label is often remembered long after the 
house has been knocked to pieces. Fortu- 



Road to Knowledge 39 

nately, the innocent blocks show no sign of 
ever having been so utilized, and can again 
be used indefinitely. Occasionally some 
new builder, either with courtesy or sar- 
casm, will admit that ' ' This is the malt that 
lay in the house that Jack built," and is 
quite likely to add, "This is the rat that 
ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack 
built. " 

Coming now to knowledge as applied to 
resources and utilities, or practical com- 
mon sense, the idea prevails that it is very 
largely, if not altogether, empirical, a sort 
of go-as-you-please, hit or miss affair, with 
results very largely fortuitous. 

But even here common sense gets in its 
work and custom belies theory. 

In the arts and crafts, in applied science 
everywhere, education and a course of 
exact and specific training are demanded, 
and their results are appreciated, applaud- 
ed and utilized, and, what seems most satis- 
factory of all, generally in demand and 
paid for. 



40 Constructive Psychology 

Technical schools are more and more de- 
manded and their students seem to increase 
in proportion to the decrease of students 
in the study of metaphysics and philoso- 
phy. I cannot speak from statistics, but 
I imagine from current events that the 
"Tech" graduate has ten or twenty 
chances to one as against the ordinary uni- 
versity graduate in entering at once into 
remunerative employment and a prosper- 
ous business career. 

Knowledge for its own sake — I mean real 
knowledge, built upon common sense and 
available as resources of individual life, 
and success in the highest and best sense — 
seems likely to be lost sight of. 

There is a marked disposition to bunch 
this real knowledge with the philosophies, 
or to treat it with good natured contempt 
as only another "house that Jack built.' ' 

A little reflection will show the folly and 
the real lack of common sense in all such 
conclusions. 

What one can do as a man, one 's re- 



Road to Knoivledge 41 

sources for business, for success in a social 
sense as a man amongst men, is, indeed, 
an urgent and ever-pressing problem. But 
it is by no means the only problem that 
every individual has to face. It depends 
strictly, in the long run and in the last 
analysis, on the other and deeper problem 
— what the individual is as a man. His 
resources are not simply what he has 
acquired. These are not his real and last- 
ing possessions. Only in so far as increase 
of knowledge builds character can it be re- 
garded as one's real and lasting possession, 
one's asset in the sum of resources in hu- 
man life. 

"We have been so long accustomed to com- 
mon sense separate from ethics or morals, 
assigning the former to business or prac- 
tical worldly affairs and the latter to relig- 
ion or the other world, that just here com- 
mon sense seems the most uncommon kind. 

It is no more true nor practically appar- 
ent that "a chain is no stronger than its 
weakest link ,, than that the character of 



42 Constructive Psychology 

a man and his practical resources and 
" staying qualities " in business and in 
every walk of life are no stronger nor more 
enduring than his greatest weakness or his 
smallest vices. If proof of this principle 
were required we have only to turn to the 
daily chronicle in the newspapers of the 
day and find it in the absconding president 
or clerk of some bank where ability in many 
directions was unable longer to conceal the 
weakness in one direction, with suicide, im- 
prisonment or lasting disgrace and sorrow 
as the result. 

Nor is the lesson by any means confined 
to finance, nor the suffering, loss and dis- 
grace to the single sinner. Even from the 
pathological point of view this defective 
knowledge may be counted as disease, no 
less than criminal or immoral. The hard- 
headed, common-sense way of looking at 
these defects in knowledge and lapses in 
character is that they do not pay; and this 
fact may and ought to be learned without 
such sad and sorrowful experience. 



Road to Knowledge 43 

The road to real Knowledge then, the 
process that puts the individual in full pos- 
session of his resources as a man and 
builds character, should result from the 
application of common sense not only to 
the daily experiences of life, but as a test 
of real Knowledge. 

The theologians, the philosophers and 
the metaphysicians are rapidly preparing 
to sidestep and admit just this, and in so 
doing they are just now holding memorial 
services over many a philosophical "house 
that Jack built. ' ' 

They have labeled the new departure 
"Pragmatism." 

All this has come about through the turn- 
ing of attention from philosophy and meta- 
physics as such and admitting the trans- 
cendent utility and importance of common 
sense and combined experiences. They 
sweep aside the pantheon of the gods as 
ruthlessly as they do the dialectics of the 
philosophers. 

They have come back to the study of 



44 Constructive Psychology 

man, to common sense, and to what actually 
and practically pays. In short, they have 
returned to the law of use. 

This "new knowledge' ' is indeed very 
old, and the high-sounding title, "Pragma- 
tism," will do as a bugaboo for the present, 
till some freshman among iconoclasts kicks 
over this latest "house that Jack built' ' 
and our modern philosophers add their own 
label to those of their predecessors. 

Here follow a few brief extracts from 
Prof. William James' recent lectures on 
Pragmatism : 

"Pragmatism is uncomfortable away 
from facts. Eationalism is comfortable 
only in the presence of abstraction." 

1 ' The pragmatist clings to facts and con- 
creteness, observes truth at its work in par- 
ticular cases, and generalizes. Truth for 
him becomes a class-name for all sorts of 
definite working values in experience." 

The pragmatic method means: "The 
attitude of looking away from first things, 
principles, categories, supposed necessities, 



Road to Knowledge 45 

and of looking towards last things, fruits, 
consequences, facts." 

Away go the card-houses and the cate- 
gories. Even the labels are badly blurred, 
and this " house that Jack built,' ' to which 
Prof. William James is quite willing to 
attach his illustrious name, seems now to 
stand on the Road to Real Knowledge. In 
other words, the criterion of truth, and the 
test of Knowledge, are its immediate and 
practical utility in the life of, not only the 
average individual, but of every man. 

The question now is not "What is 
Knowledge or Philosophy !" but what is 
man? And only as, or in so far as this 
question is actually answered, can we de- 
termine what is the highest and best that 
man can do. 

The human mind is as prone to build 
theories, systems and philosophies as is the 
human hand to construct appliances and 
utilities. Libraries full of the former are 
scarcely more valuable than rubbish heaps 
of the latter. Historically, and for the 



46 Constructive Psychology 

antiquarian, both aggregates have indeed a 
certain value. 

One thing is quite certain, and that is, if 
the Pragmatist is neither self -deceived nor 
deceiving us, the Eoad to Real Knowledge 
now surveyed and under construction, is a 
straight cut air line to be speedily opened 
for business, equipped with common sense 
and guaranteed to pay enormous dividends. 
One cannot help wondering if it is really 
all a bluff. 

It is quite unnecessary to describe here 
the various methods devised by man for 
explaining the reason or meaning of things, 
the categories of principles recognized in 
nature and in life, the motives to action, 
the theories and ways and means devised 
for the betterment of man. All these things 
may be found in the histories of Philos- 
ophy. 

Many of the so-called philosophers have 
believed that they had solved the riddle, 
and that beyond the elaboration of their 
propositions and their application to de- 



Road to Knotvledge 47 

tails, little more was to be desired beyond 
their own discoveries. 

In scarcely any case was the discovery 
really anything new to the world. In gen- 
eral, it was either a new statement of an 
old proposition that had become forgotten, 
or the old view with new surroundings and 
a somewhat different application. 

The new view was presented in a differ- 
ent light, and the enthusiasm and often the 
fanaticism of the advocate attracted an 
audience which caught something of the en- 
thusiasm, knowing little of the principles 
involved, and nothing whatever of its form- 
er history, trials, success or failure. 

The amount of real knowledge extending 
down to basic principles and grasping 
natural laws and orderly sequences has in 
most cases been very small. Knowledge of 
previous movements along any of these 
lines and the causes of former failures have 
rarely been clearly apprehended and borne 
in mind. 

All this applies to modern socialistic 



48 Constructive Psychology 

movements, community experiments and 
organizations of whatever name or nature 
designed for the betterment of individual 
or group life. 

Under the stress of getting rid of "the 
struggle for existence in the midst of a 
hostile environment" people have formed 
themselves into groups for mutual advan- 
tage and protection. Some of these groups, 
like the Oneida Community, have been very 
successful in an economic way, while slowly 
disintegrating from lack of any deeper or 
broader knowledge of the duties and re- 
sponsibilities involved in individual growth 
and the method of higher evolution. 

Here is always a l c wheel within a wheel. ' ' 
Man as an Individual Intelligence involved 
in the process of individual evolution is, at 
the same time, a social unit involved in a 
group, the members of which act and react 
upon each other continually. Often the in- 
dividual has sought alone in a cave, or by 
fleeing to the desert, that solitude and in- 
trospection which he believed would insure 



Road to Knowledge 49 

his own redemption, illumination or libera- 
tion. 

Very seldom has man perceived that the 
individual and the social evolution are in- 
separable and must be worked out together, 
that no complete and all around develop- 
ment, no real and permanent higher evolu- 
tion could be attained save by experience 
and adjustment along both lines and the 
adjustment of one group of experiences 
with the other. 

The tendency and habit of philosophers 
to found schools, of religious mystics or en- 
thusiasts to form sects, as of socialists and 
political economists to form groups or com- 
munities, are worldwide and as old as civili- 
zation itself. The leaders and founders of 
these groups have seldom been able to 
eliminate the personal equation. 

Enthusiasts by nature, emotional to a 
large degree, they have generally been ego- 
tists and often fanatics. 

By their utterances, often oracular, they 
have been able to appeal to the same ele- 



50 Constructive Psychology 

ments and arouse the same passions in 
their auditors, reserving for themselves the 
special mission and office of Leader, 
prophet or oracle. 

" Peter the Hermit' ' may serve as an 
illustration in the past with the Crusades 
as an object lesson, and Dowie and Mrs. 
Eddy in modern times, the one combining 
narrow religious concepts, unbounded ego- 
tism and blatant self-assertion, with greed 
for wealth, and promise of Eutopia for his 
dupes ; the other, combining personal greed 
and self -laudation with autohypnotism and 
contradictory and absurd assertions, prom- 
ising health and business success to her 
followers. 

Such things have been possible in all 
ages down to the present time, for the rea- 
son that the followers of these " divine 
healers,' ' " Leaders/ ' and "Official heads" 
are entirely ignorant, as a rule, of previous 
similar exploitations differing often only 
in name, that have ended in disappoint- 
ment, often in discouragement and dis- 



Road to Knowledge 51 

grace, and sometimes in despair and sui- 
cide. 

The sycophancy and self-effacement of 
the blind followers of these self-styled 
prophets are often pitiable, and when the 
denouement comes, as it always must soon 
or late, they are like one waking suddenly 
from a dream to the sober and common- 
place realities of life. The reaction ren- 
ders them suspicious of all pretenders and 
is apt to close the door of progress even 
along normal lines. They have simply 
swung from the attitude of credulity to 
that of incredulity, and are no nearer the 
simple truth than in the beginning. They 
have indeed had a sad and unfortunate ex- 
perience, and yet failed to learn to distin- 
guish between truth and falsehood. 

A counterfeit always presupposes that 
there is a genuine coin, else there is nothing 
to be counterfeited. 

The power to discriminate between the 
true and the false is the first step on the 
road to real knowledge. This means that 



52 Constructive Psychology 

credulity and incredulity are equally 
tabooed. One must learn first to discrimi- 
nate and then be able to reject or accept 
according to underlying principles and 
laws of evidence alone. 

That one can learn to do this and seldom 
make mistakes is not conceivable to the 
average mind, for the simple reason that 
credulity or incredulity bias either for or 
against certain results or conclusions, 
stands in the place of desire for and love 
of the simple truth. The genuine truth- 
seeker cares not a rap for results except to 
know that they are beneficent and true. 
Satisfied of this he immediately adjusts his 
thought and his life to the truth discovered. 

Nothing can transcend in importance this 
attitude of mind toward the truth. In al- 
most every case it determines results quite 
as much as facts and evidence. It is really 
an attitude of the soul, its alignment with 
truth. With a mind so gauged there is, 
moreover, an affinity with truth, that dis- 



Road to Knowledge 53 

cerns, attracts and holds it largely inde- 
pendent of time, place or circumstance. 

Ulterior motives and objects, the desire 
for wealth, fame or power, no longer bias 
the judgment or becloud the reason. 

Ideals of heaven or happiness precon- 
ceived in ignorance of what is really true, 
or permanently best, do not obscure nor 
cloud the search for what is true. 

"I know not where His islands lift 
' i Their f ronded palms in air, 
"I only know / cannot drift 
" Beyond His love and care." 

This is not only the triumph of Faith. It 
is the sure road to real Knowledge, and 
only the illuminated soul possesses it. 
Only this illumination reveals the Truth. 
There can be no revelation, no true dis- 
cernment, without it. 

Man really faces every truth in the uni- 
verse. One by one they are revealed to 
him through an affinity with his own soul, 



54 Constructive Psychology 

by an attraction like that which draws the 
needle to the pole. He becomes the Truth. 
Here, and here alone, lies the "clue to the 
labyrinth of life. ' ' It is not a i ' gift of the 
gods," nor a revelation from without, but 
a growth of the soul, an evolution from 
within. 

Knowledge of what is taking place in the 
world about us, of the laws of movement, 
proportion and harmony, changes chaos 
into cosmos and removes man from the 
position of a victim to circumstance to that 
of a master of destiny. Only by knowledge 
of and conformity to law can he work intel- 
ligently toward preconceived and desired 
results. He no longer stubbornly resists. 
He seems to acquiesce, or to be indifferent. 
He really waits, and thus discerns the lines 
of least resistance. 

When the time comes to act, it seems like 
magic, and people call him a genius. 

This requires intelligent observation, dis- 
criminating judgment, a very large degree 
of self-control, patience and courage. It 



Road to Knowledge 55 

is the death of fear, the triumph of a faith 
that is sublime, and a Will that is — 
as Schopenhauer apprehended it — "Su- 
preme." 

Eeal knowledge is not, therefore, an 
acquisition from without, like gold and 
lands and worldly possessions. 

It is, however, accumulated experience, 
digested, assimilated, and thus a perma- 
nent possession of the soul. In this sense 
it becomes understanding. Its crown is 
Wisdom and its insignia Power. 

It is relatively independent of time, place 
or circumstance, because the battle is with- 
in the soul of man. 

Many good and sincere people fail in the 
quest, less from insincerity than from im- 
patience. They seek a short cut, to "climb 
up some other way, ' ' a magical formulary, 
an occult mystery, for a consideration/ 
special instruction. 

They seek wisdom, or salvation, or 
health, or happiness, or power, in "twelve 
easy lessons" — holiness and divine favor, 



56 Constructive Psychology 

for so many prayers, penances or genuflec- 
tions ; riches or ease by trusting some ego- 
tist or grafter to "invest" or take charge 
of their hard-earned dollars. 

All these are children on the road to 
knowledge. They are indeed gathering ex- 
perience, but they pay dearly for it. 

They far more often become discouraged, 
embittered or despairing than wise. 

The grafters call them "suckers" and 
contemptuously declare that the crop never 
fails. The blossom and the fruit are peren- 
nial. 

Here and there are those who discern the 
real truth and go to work in earnest. They 
drop Time out of their categories. They 
set their heads and hearts and square their 
lives in a definite direction. They see 
everything now at a different angle and in 
a clearer light. They perceive that real 
knowledge is a growth and not an acquisi- 
tion. They are forever free from exploita- 
tion by monk, grafter or fanatic. 

Nothing can turn them from this atti- 



Road to Knowledge 57 

tude of the soul. The needle may oscillate, 
but it settles and invariably points to the 
pole, because the magnetism of truth aligns 
every atom. It turns by instinct and needs 
no reminder, because the monitor is auto- 
matic and forever at its post. Both credu- 
lity and incredulity have vanished in them 
forever. They frequently wait. They 
often say they "do not Imoiv." The ob- 
scure and the irrelevant fail to interest 
them. 

There are gaps and missing links left in 
their investigations. They waste no time 
in seeking to fill them, but they are quick 
to discern and appropriate when the miss- 
ing link appears. They are quick to dis- 
cern that "what is true is True, and what 
is false is False.' ' 

All of this puts the quest for real knowl- 
edge on the lines of least resistance. 

It is only the beginning, the "outfit" for 
the journey. What the result or the end 
may be we need neither know nor care. 

The quest becomes so satisfying, the 



58 Constructive Psychology 

journey so delightful, the daily conquest so 
uplifting, that one can never become im- 
patient that it should end. One can scarce- 
ly imagine anything ' ' better. ' ' 

This opening of the avenues of real 
knowledge, this alignment of the soul with 
Truth, is also that " Diapason of Nature 
that closes full in man." 

It is also reconciliation with Law and 
harmony, or at-one-ment with God. Hence 
Jesus said: "I and my Father are one" 
It is precisely the reverse of vicarious. It 
is at-one-ment, not l i atonement. ' ' 

Sin, pain and suffering mean the discov- 
ery of the lines of greatest resistance and 
show how things desirable cannot be done 
or attained. They are sign-posts of dan- 
gers to be avoided and pitfalls to be 
shunned. 

They become beacon lights for the mari- 
ner on the ocean of truth, and the pilot at 
the helm wastes no time in regretting or 
deploring them. He just sails around 
them and goes on his ivay. He never wan- 



Road to Knowledge 59 

tonly sails among rocks and shoals just to 
gain ' ' experience. ' ' He will find plenty of 
these as "object lessons" if he holds steady 
to his course and true to his goal. 

They serve as contrasts to bring the 
truth into still clearer light. He may 
utilize them without seeking them. He 
must recognize evil in order to apprehend 
and appreciate the good, the true and the 
beautiful. 

A landscape without shadows would be- 
come a monotonous and tiresome glare of 
light. What we call "good" and "evil" 
are less opposite extremes than contrasted 
degrees and varying utilities. 

One who perceives this clearly and in its 
true light will never deliberately "do evil 
that good may come." He will rather ac- 
cept the inevitable and turn circumstance 
into opportunity. 

The human organism practices this sub- 
tle alchemy every moment of our lives by 
turning waste products and ptomaines into 
compounds for the maintenance of life, like 



60 Constructive Psychology 

the bile, for example. Even our slaughter 
houses have caught this philosophy of util- 
ity and are said to utilize everything but 
the " squeal of the swine and the bellow of 
kine. ' ' Thus the greed for gain runs fast- 
er than love of truth. 

As already said, the clear recognition of 
these principles that lie at the very founda- 
tion of the quest for real knowledge marks 
the beginning and equips the seeker of 
Truth for his journey. 

One should not accept them as dogmas 
based upon any authority. They are not 
new to the world. If they do not appeal 
directly to individual intelligence and com- 
mon experience, if one cannot test by them 
all his past experience, and in their light 
sum up results in his own life, he had bet- 
ter compromise with his conscience, trust 
it to another's keeping, pay his tithes of 
mint, anise and cumin, neglect none of the 
prescribed genuflections and trust to mir- 
acle or another world for any real progress 
in knowledge. 



Road to Knowledge 61 

The constructive principle in human evo- 
lution depends strictly and solely on intel- 
ligent personal effort, like learning to walk 
and every other human attribute or func- 
tion. 

The progressive evolution of man as a 
whole, as one Individual Intelligence, de- 
pends upon the same principle manifest in 
each and every individual function. Not 
only is the whole equal to the sum of all its 
parts, but one basic principle underlies each 
part and the whole. How otherwise could 
harmony (health or holiness) be possible 
to man? 



THE GBOWTH OF THE SOUL 

The resources of man are twofold. 
These are, first, his own faculties, capaci- 
ties and powers, the endowment of the Indi- 
vidual Intelligence, and, second, his en- 
vironment. 

Individuals differ from one another in 
the degree of development, associate rela- 
tions and i i dominant chord ' 9 of this natural 
endowment. One has a weak will and 
strong passions, and is likely to become dis- 
sipated unless he learns to use the will and 
control his passions. This means self-con- 
trol. Another has a strong will, but his 
sense of justice, of duty, of personal re- 
sponsibility are weak and undeveloped, and 
he is likely to be a headstrong tyrant, or an 
unreasoning, selfish brute, unless the ele- 
ment of human kindness is cultivated. 

There are as many of these combinations 

62 



Growth of the Soul 63 

(personalities) as there are people in the 
world, for there are no two exactly alike. 
If there were selfhood (individuality) 
would be impossible. 

The whole of the present life is, for the 
great majority of persons, a training school 
for the growth of the soul or the realiza- 
tion of selfhood. In this sense the great 
majority of persons never go to school at 
all. They play "truant" all their lives, 
picking morals or immorals up from the 
streets, the slums, the gutters, with an occa- 
sional " sermon" or Fourth of July oration 
mixed in. 

They follow unreasoning impulse or 
blind passion, are governed by their 
"likes" and "dislikes," or yield to the 
necessity of work or to the despotism of 
the law. Beyond these internal resources 
of the individual intelligence there are the 
environment, the incidents of birth, asso- 
ciations and the circumstances and condi- 
tions which may serve as temptations, ad- 
vantages or opportunities. 



64 Constructive Psychology 

Constructive Psychology recognizes all 
these resources, conditions and variations, 
and undertakes to make clear the co-ordi- 
nate meaning, purpose and possibilities 
thus latent in man. Amidst the noise, con- 
fusion and harsh discords, made by the 
"warring members' ' and the clamorous 
passions within the soul of man, Construc- 
tive Psychology points out the way of re- 
ducing these to harmony and converting 
noise into music, under the guidance of a 
Master, the real self, and * ' inviting his own 
soul" to such a symphony as he never be- 
fore dreamed of. 

Constructive Psychology makes it clear 
that this latent harmony, this joy in living, 
is the Law of man 's being, the design on his 
trestleboard, placed there, latent, in the 
very foundation of life. Organization, 
function and development are the instru- 
ments and notes of man's symphony. He 
has only to still the noise and confusion in 
order to hear the music. 

Why do men and women listen, still and 



Growth of the Soul 65 

breathless almost, to a symphony of Bee- 
thoven ? Because every chord and cadence 
vibrates with resonance through their 
whole being. 

Man discovered consonance and har- 
mony. It was created by the Creator of 
men and of worlds and this absorbing en- 
joyment of music and forgetfulness of all 
noise and confusion, this forgetting of self, 
are a foretaste of the spiritual life of the 
soul, from which one returns dazed and 
reluctant to the common and meaner things 
of life. 

And what is all this but an object lesson 
in the kindergarten of the soul, revealing 
its own possibilities for harmony and satis- 
faction ? The memory of such a symphony, 
particularly if enjoyed in company with a 
loved one whose hand in silence clasped 
your own, and whose heart like yours kept 
beat with the harmony, may last for days 
or even for a lifetime. 

Constructive Psychology teaches man 
how to involve more and more of that har- 



66 Constructive Psychology 

mony which is designedly the dominant 
chord of the Individual Intelligence. Evo- 
lution furnishes the variations which are 
virtually limitless, but the soul never 
quite loses the theme nor need forget the 
combination. 

Constructive Psychology means con- 
tinual self -adjustment, continual expansion 
of harmonic composition, greater and 
greater range of experience, increasing 
power of expression and apprehension, till 
it increases and expands the cradle song 
of Mother Nature, the lullaby of the Soul, 
into the symphony of Creation, the anthem 
of the starry hosts. 

Let the monists deny and the egomaniacs 
rave, for they have not yet even heard the 
cradle song of the soul, and we may allow 
them undisturbed the complacency with 
which they pity our love of harmony. 
What would the world be with all its noise 
if man had never discovered music? Just 
what the soul would be if harmony with 
itself and consonance with both God and 



Growth of the Soul 67 

Nature did not lie at the foundation and in 
the background of man's being. 

Man is not a conglomerate of fortuitous 
elements and functions. He is a co-ordi- 
nate whole, even when out of tune. The 
monist and the materialist seem never to 
have heard one harmonious strain, but only 
the tuning of the instruments ; and they dis- 
like " noise' ' and refuse to wait till the con- 
ductor takes his place and raises his baton, 
first for silence, and then — a new revela- 
tion! 

With eyes fixed on the mollusk and the 
mammal, digging among fossils for the 
"missing link," the monist presumes to de- 
termine the nature and read the destiny of 
man. Ask him to face about and take one 
look at the stars and he pauses with pity in 
his eyes and a superior " scientific' ' smile 
on his face, and then — resumes his digging 
among the "progenitors of the human 
race." 

How he would roar "I told you so," if 
only once in his dreams he could see and 



68 Constructive Psychology 

hear an ape that could talk Latin or even 
Chocktaw! And yet, all the time at the 
other extreme of the line of ascent, there 
stand a host forever beckoning him to 
' ' come up higher and take a new survey of 
the growth of the soul, and tie his chariot 
to a star. ' ' 

Growth, differentiation, adjustment, de- 
velopment, completion — here are the de- 
signs, the methods and conscious recogni- 
tion, and personal effort the way. 

Time is but man's recognition, his aware- 
ness of the passing of events, the succession 
of phenomena, the incidents that succeed 
each other in his consciousness. These are 
relatively " short or long" (time), " large 
or small' ' (space). These lie at the foun- 
dation of man's perception of events or 
things, his power to apprehend size and 
velocity, and relate him to what we call 
"matter and force," which condition his 
consciousness on the physical plane. 

The growth of the soul is relatively inde- 
pendent of space and time and may become 



Growth of the Soul 69 

independent of physical conditions and cir- 
cumstances. 

The purpose to be accomplished is with- 
in the conscious realm, within the soul. 

If one ' * sets his house in order, ' ' that is, 
determines to accomplish a given result, 
not in the world outside, but within, and 
holds that determination like a dominant 
chord in music, one after another the indif- 
ferent functions and faculties and the war- 
ring and discordant passions and powers 
will come in tune and wheel into line. The 
question is, can and will he hold the deter- 
mination, or will he "forget," vascillate, 
backslide and then resume, or give it up 1 

No one can determine this but himself. 
It all depends on how strongly he desires 
and determines. As a rule man "plays 
fast and loose," makes excuses, com- 
promises with his conscience, till a really 
dominating passion or a great temptation 
comes in and then he blames "society," or 
circumstances, or lack of opportunity, and 



70 Constructive Psychology 

so compromises with his conscience, and is 
sorry for himself and his Failure. 

Everything that we know of physiology 
teaches that proper use and perfect de- 
velopment are interdependent. There is 
not one law of development for the health 
of the body and a contradictory one for the 
growth of the soul. If there were health 
and evolution would be inconceivable, for 
man would be hopelessly at crosspurposes 
with himself. 

That the average individual continually 
works at crosspurposes with himself is 
true. His is the labor of Cissiphus. The 
stone that he rolls up hill all day falls at 
night to the place of beginning — nay, it 
rolls harder and falls easier and swifter 
every day, till at last he cries "What's the 
use!" 

The right determination, the steadfast 
will, can hold the stone for every inch 
gained and will "reach the summit if it 
takes a thousand years.' ' When, lo! a 



Growth of the Soul 71 

miracle happens, the summit is close at 
hand, and one knows that it is sure. 

The building of character by intelligent 
design, steadfast determination and per- 
sonal effort, is the prerogative and power 
of man alone, so far as this world is con- 
cerned, and nothing on earth can defeat 
him who Wills! He must be equally ready 
to wait, or to act, but never lose his deter- 
mination for a moment. 

Many persons will declare this character 
building, this growth of the soul, to be ' l too 
much trouble.' ' They have not yet per- 
ceived nor sensed the Great Reward. They 
have not yet caught one glimpse of the real 
palace of the soul in the " Kingdom of 
Heaven' ' within. 

They have not yet caught one strain of 
the real Song of Life, the harmony of na- 
ture, the real joy of the soul, nor realized 
the fetters that bind nor the shambles that 
hold them. They may, if they Will, rise 
above time and place and circumstance, and 
sit as Masters at their own table, crowned 



72 Constructive Psychology 

with plenty, self-poised, masterful, full- 
grown Men and Women. All else they can 
renounce, but this is Being, and belongs to 
God, and the more they would give it for 
the benefit of man the larger it becomes 
and the more God claims it for his own. 

This is indeed the complete antithesis, 
the reversal of Nietzsche's " Splendid 
Blonde Beast." It is superman. His name 
is Christ os. 

What a man can do for himself, for so- 
ciety, for his fellowman, depends, at any 
moment of his life, on what he is; and what 
he is depends on how he has utilized his 
capacities and opportunities and mastered 
his latent powers and possibilities. 

It is thus that man's value to society de- 
pends upon and is solely determined by his 
value in, and to, and of himself. 

The well-being of society is solely deter- 
mined by the evolution and status of each 
individual. The Monist and the Material- 
ist, who prate about the Superman, the 



Growth of the Soul 73 

' ' Splendid Blonde Beast ' ' that is to repre- 
sent the highest evolution and gain his 
supremacy by trampling others down, lacks 
even the finer instincts of the beast, and 
stands as a complete inversion of the whole 
theory of evolution. Such inversion could 
devolve the beasts into devils, but never 
evolve them into men. 

As Christos, the real superman stands 
above the ordinary plane, the middle 
ground of human evolution, pointing up- 
ward, so stands Satan at the other extreme 
pointing downward. 

These are for us ideals; one representing 
Divinity as the crown and glory of Human- 
ity; the other forever representing the 
apotheosis of selfishness and greed and all 
manner of uncharity. Every man has to 
choose soon or late, for no man can face 
both ways. 

The building of character by personal 
effort, the growth of the soul and the evo- 
lution of man, till he can step from the 



74 Constructive Psychology 

human to the divine and spiritual plane, as 
before he passed from the subhuman or 
animal plane to the human, are the same. 
They all depend upon personal effort and 
recognition of the law of assent. 



THE SECEET OF POWER 

We may now inquire what powers belong 
to man as the accompaniment of character- 
building under the Constructive Principle. 

From the foregoing suggestions it may 
readily be discerned that Evolution is a re- 
fining process. 

The tissues, organs and functions of man 
are a great refinement upon those of the 
animal. 

While the self-conscious individual intel- 
ligence which man is, constitutes a definite 
type, and the range of faculties, capacities 
and powers in the human being transcends 
that of the brute, giving rise to self-con- 
scious identity; the fact is generally over- 
looked that a still higher plane and a more 
perfect type are involved in man, just as 
humanity is perceived to have been in- 
volved in the animal. 

75 



76 Constructive Psychology 

The higher evolution of man now de- 
pends upon his recognition, his awareness 
of, and striving toward that higher plane. 
The conditions are such that he must do 
this by free choice and rational volition. 

In all evolution below the human plane 
the impulse was deep-seated and seemingly 
automatic in Nature. The aim of this evo- 
lution seems to have been to prepare an 
organism, a vehicle, a habitat for the hu- 
man soul. 

Nature alone provided for the evolution 
of Life, for the upward trend, for the 
vehicle of the Individual Intelligence with- 
out consulting man. From that point on- 
ward and upward man was taken into coun- 
cil. The aim was selfhood, and co-opera- 
tion became the condition, the price for the 
realization of Self. 

A moment's reflection will reveal the 
fact that selfhood could not possibly be the 
outcome, the result, or the reward of an- 
other's work, whether of gods or men. 

The power to choose, to act, to know and 



Secret of Power 11 

to become means individual initiative and 
personal effort. 

It is provided that this initiative and 
effort so essential to individual evolution 
may be made in such a manner as to assist 
in the general evolution of mankind. 

Man by his own intelligence, and guided 
by his intuitions and all his experiences, 
must find the lines of least resistance. 

Pain and sorrow mean the lines of great- 
est resistance and teach man what to avoid 
and how a given thing ought not to be done. 
Nature seems to insist on the well-being of 
humanity as a whole, and the reward for 
man's co-operation is his own higher evolu- 
tion and completer happiness. 

These guides, suggestions and admoni- 
tions are on every hand; and when man 
once realizes what real co-operation means 
and what is its great reward for the first 
time he really begins to live. 

That Divinity should thus take man into 
council, invite him to co-operate and re- 
ward him at every step for faithful service 



78 Constructive Psychology 

seems the most amazing and glorious thing 
in the whole life of man. 

This is where the Divine Fatherhood is 
manifest. It is not arbitrary, despotic nor 
tyrannical; but suggestive, persuasive, 
monitorial, so as to develop in man the 
power still further to co-operate, and be- 
come himself an agent of power, capable of 
still higher initiative — a co-worker with 
both God and Nature. 

Man may fail " seven times, or seventy 
times seven,' ' and yet is urged by all his 
aspirations to try again. And so long as 
he is willing to try the door of assent is 
never closed. Even if he becomes discour- 
aged and despairing the wheels of Time 
may wait and the door of opportunity re- 
main wide open. 

It is only when he rebels, purposely turns 
his face toward the brute, refuses to harbor 
one ray of kindly sympathy and becomes 
an agent of destruction to his fellowman, 
deliberately and intentionally, like Nietz- 
sche's " Splendid Blonde Beast," that the 



Secret of Power 79 

impulse of higher evolution in Nature is 
reversed and man begins the steep descent 
of devolution. 

This is the Law and the gospel, the mean- 
ing of evolution, and the world is full of 
object lessons to prove it true. 

The secret of power, therefore, lies in 
man's co-operation with God, with Nature 
and with his fellowmen in the upward 
march of evolution. Given the power to 
choose, man has to develop the power to 
discriminate, to measure values, to assent 
or dissent, to say "yes" or "no," to act, 
or to withhold action. 

Thus arises an experience which demon- 
strates the value of things, of ideas, of 
principles and of results. Thus is devel- 
oped the power of Will, of Judgment, of 
Eeason and a knowledge of relations and 
values. 

The net result of all this experience at 
any given time in two individuals may 
differ very widely. But the Law, the proc- 
ess, the principles involved, are always 



80 Constructive Psychology 

the same. The individual's own standard 
of values, his estimate of what is just, right, 
true and desirable determines his character 
and measures his personal responsibility. 
In other words, it illumines his conscience. 

Freedom is not the repudiation of all re- 
straints, but the recognition of just and 
equitable restraints, and real evolution pro- 
vides that these restraints shall be self- 
imposed. The man must become a law to 
himself, and he can only do this by 
obedience to law. 

Hence it has been said: "The wicked 
obey the law through fear; the wise keep 
the law through knowledge^ U*\ 

Freedom, when well deserved and rightly 
used, promotes law and order, not confu- 
sion and disorder. 

There is no principle, nor power in Na- 
ture, nor in the life of man that permits the 
growth of power and its continued misuse. 
Without ultimately curbing that power it 
will inevitably destroy him who misuses it. 

Evolution never designs to produce a 



Secret of Power 81 

race of devils or destroyers, like Nietzsche's 
" Splendid Blonde Beast." 

If such a race produces itself by inver- 
sion of the law it inevitably destroys 
itself. Otherwise the whole human race 
might be transformed into demons. 

Not only natural law but Divine Intelli- 
gence has made such a result impossible. 
But the human race has been given the 
power to destroy itself, or to redeem itself. 

He who conceives as possible a race of 
demons endowed with immortality has 
misinterpreted Nature and logically repu- 
diated divinity or the Divine Intelligence. 

This, however, is the logic of Atheism, 
and it is belied by all we know of Evolu- 
tion. 

It is only by cutting and trimming and 
entire misconception of evolution that 
Atheism can be affirmed. 

There is intelligence in man; and since 
man, by all conceptions, is a part of Na- 
ture, therefore, there is intelligence in Na- 
ture. 



82 Constructive Psychology 

There is individual intelligence — Man. 
There is universal intelligence — God. 
Man's heredity is from both. 

The Atheist is not "wicked/' he is sim- 
ply superficial and ignorant. He should 
not be punished, but pitied. He punishes 
himself, like him who foolishly, ignorantly 
or wantonly courts disease. 

The power of man to perfect himself im- 
plies the power to destroy himself. This 
is the meaning of free choice, rational voli- 
tion and personal responsibility; and the 
power of initiative under the light of rea- 
son, seems given to man alone. Only the 
brute follows blindly the animal instincts. 
Whenever man recognizes within himself 
only the brute instincts he has "lost his 
reason'' (become insane), and devolution 
toward the brute has usurped the place of 
evolution toward the divine. The common 
judgment of mankind and all the courts of 
justice hold the insane as irresponsible. 

Where insanity arises from physical dis- 
ease it is a misfortune. 



Secret of Power 83 

Whenever it arises from riotous pas- 
sions, selfishness and greed it is Nemesis — 
the fiat of both God and Nature — "Thus 
far shalt thou go, but no farther.' ' It 
means that the evolutionary impulse in 
Nature is governed by Justice, the 
"Balance." 

Pass one fraction below the zero point 
and ' ' destruction lies that way. ' ' Millions 
of human beings seem to hover around the 
brink of the "steep descent." Other mil- 
lions fluctuate to and fro. Others declare : 
"I will arise and go to the Father," that is, 
use personal effort toward self-perfection. 

The seekers of power are legion, but the 
motives in seeking and the use designed to 
be made of power when won are as various 
as the persons who seek to gain it. 

Self-indulgence and the applause of their 
fellowmen enter into nearly all of these 
ambitions. Only here and there one real- 
izes that self-mastery is the noblest of all 
achievements, and that the completeness of 
the individual in himself makes him a cen- 



84 Constructive Psychology 

ter of power, independent of time, place, 
circumstance or any outward event or con- 
dition. 

' ' Man is not man as yet, 

Nor shall I deem his object served, his end 

Attained, his genuine strength put fairly 

forth, 
While only here and there a star dispels 
The darkness, here and there a towering 

mind 
Overlooks its prostrate fellows, when the 

host 
Is out at once to the despair of night, 
When all mankind alike is perfected, 
Equal in full-blown power — then, not till 

then, 
I say, begins man's general infancy. 
Such men are even now upon the earth 
Serene amid the half-formed creatures 

'round.' ' 

It will be an immense advance on the 
present evolution of the human race when 



Secret of Poiver 85 

the average "teacher" and "preacher" 
realizes such an evolution to be the real 
meaning of life, the possible evolution of 
the individual and the crown and glory of 
human existence on this earth. 

Their scepticism and infidelity at this 
point retard the progress of mankind more 
than all the blatant infidelity and atheism 
of the Monist or the Materialist. They talk 
and preach about a "spiritual world, or 
state of existence," and yet can give no 
rational conception of the meaning of such 
words. 

Few of them have really got beyond the 
harps and wings and golden pavements of 
the childhood of the race. A few might 
admit (privately) that it would really seem 
monotonous and tiresome to bow half -bent 
before a throne and sing psalms to all eter- 
nity. 

Their "Revelations" reveal very little 
;that finds an echo in the weary and hungry 
soul of man, and they still make a virtue 
of "believing" that which has no virtue 






86 Constructive Psychology 

beyond the tyranny of superstition and a 
makeshift for ignorance, credulity and 
fear. So they turn their backs to the light 
of the higher evolution, to the mastership 
of man, to any method by which it might 
be achieved, and cling, "like grim death,' ' 
to the childish fables of antiquity. 

Man's struggle for self -completion finds 
here one of its greatest enemies, entrenched 
and bristling with ' i canons of orthodoxy, ' ' 
often belching their fires of anathema. 

The world has had to progress in the face 
of and in spite of all these things, and yet 
it has progressed. 

The refinement of the nature, functions, 
appetites and ideals of man, incident to the 
real work of Constructive Psychology here- 
in outlined, is not a mere matter of senti- 
ment — it is a matter of transfiguration, of 
transubstantiation. 

The vibrations of waves of light incident 
to sight and of ether incident to sound, as- 
sume a wider range and function in higher 
octaves, or planes of consonance. 



Secret of Power 87 

Plato said: "We see by virtue of the 
light which is in the eye, commingling with 
the light of the sun." The possible range 
of perception in man is not limited to the 
so-called physical plane, though habitually 
it may not pass beyond that plane. 

Every student of music and kinetics con- 
ceives, if he goes beyond the mere surface 
knowledge of the subject, that there are 
almost endless vibrations both below and 
above those apprehensible to the human 
ear and the human eye. 

Helmholtz finds a gap of thirty-four oc- 
taves between the point where our appre- 
hension or perception of sound leaves off 
and our perception of colors begins. Take 
then the seven or eight octaves used in 
music and an equal number belonging to 
our perception of colors, adding the thirty- 
four intervening octaves mentioned by 
Helmholtz, with an unappreciated number 
both below and above this range, and we 
begin to get a vague perception of the 
"Diapason of Nature.' ' 



88 Constructive Psychology 

So it may readily be conceived that it is 
quite possible for man by scientific culti- 
vation and a process of refinement very 
largely to increase the range of his percep- 
tion of light and color and sound. 

The Circassian women who generation 
after generation weave the beautiful Cir- 
cassian shawls, are said to be able to dis- 
tinguish more than fifteen hundred shades 
of color. Not only so, but occasionally a 
"sensitive" actually sees and hears things 
invisible and inaudible to others, and to 
himself ordinarily. 

The problem of refinement and increase 
in the range of man's perceptions is, there- 
fore, purely a question of fact, under scien- 
tific experiment, and natural, physiological 
and psychic law. 

" Mystics' ' and " Saints" in all ages, by 
fasting, prayer and meditation, have gained 
refined and wider range of perception, 
though knowing and learning nothing of 
the science of the method, or the meaning 
of the law. 



Secret of Power 89 

Many drugs are known to produce clair- 
voyance and clairaudience ; some, at least, 
of the things seen and heard being demon- 
strably true. 

i ' Dominant ideas, ' ' the fright, or ecstasy, 
and the ravings of the insane have, in many 
instances, a basis in fact; and to these we 
may add the "multiple personalities" and 
obsessions now frequently recognized. 

The facts and suggestions along this line 
are not meager, but altogether redundant 
and bewildering from their multiplicity. 

Constructive Psychology undertakes to 
bring order out of all this confusion, har- 
mony out of all this discordance, law out 
of all this ' ' accident ' ' and empiricism. 

Instruction here, however, is not merely 
instruction in an art to be acquired. Those 
who really know the Law will never make 
that mistake. 

The refining process which is to make 
one Master of these finer forces and more 
subtle powers of Nature is not simply an 



90 Constructive Psychology 

art; it is a transformation of man's whole 
being, a higher evolution, a regeneration. 

Suppose that by a certain process of 
training the politician, the speculator or 
the "grafter" could learn to read the 
thoughts and discover the plans and de- 
signs of his neighbor, or competitor; he 
would not only be more dangerous to so- 
ciety than he now is, but he would have 
entered on that path of devolution known 
to all ages, the "left hand path of black 
magic' ' that leads to destruction, typified 
and illustrated by ' ' Margrave ' ' in Bulwer 's 
"Strange Story.' ' 

That one may facilitate his own progress 
in Constructive Psychology is unquestion- 
able. That ' ' one who knows ' ' may greatly 
assist his progress by proper instruction is 
equally true. But step by step one must 
demonstrate his knowledge of the law of 
use, and prove by repeated trial that he is 
immune to all temptation of ever misusing 
the wider knowledge and greater power 
gained. 



Secret of Power 91 

People still ridicule the idea and laugh 
at the term " black magic,' ' even in the face 
of telepathy, the annals of modern hypno- 
tism and cases of obsession. 

The civilization of Egypt, one of the 
highest and most beneficent ever achieved 
by man, turned downward to destruction 
and desolation from just that point of 
4 'black magic' '; and clericalism alone in 
civilized countries perpetuates the abomi- 
nation today. 

Moreover, the real master who knows the 
law, if he consented to teach one he knew 
to be not worthy and well qualified, and 
who would misuse the power gained, would 
share in the responsibility of such abuse. 
He would share also in the devolution 
which would be the inevitable result. 

Such is the law of use, the absolute meas- 
ure of personal responsibility. 

It is well for every intelligent human be- 
ing to know the law — to know that he can 
evolve to higher and still higher planes 
through self-control and personal effort. 



92 Constructive Psychology 

But he must also realize that added re- 
sponsibility goes with every increase of 
knowledge, however won, or he must pay 
the penalty. The law is fixed and irrevoca- 
ble. It is beneficent to mankind at large, 
but destructive to him who knowingly and 
deliberately misuses it. 

Hence the necessity of Living a Life in 
consonance with the Good Law and as the 
only possible guaranty of continued prog- 
ress along the lines of higher evolution. 

The measure of man's individual free- 
dom is the law of personal responsibility. 

The measure of man's individual prog- 
ress is the law of use. 

The measure of man's individual power 
is his beneficence to mankind at large. 

The measure of man's individual possi- 
bilities is his intelligent, conscientious, per- 
sonal effort. 

These are the exact theorems of Con- 
structive Psychology. It is not at all 
difficult thereupon to form a rational con- 



Secret of Power 93 

ception of a spiritual world as a refinement 
of the physical. 

Suppose man's perception of vibration 
(his power to respond to sight waves and 
sound waves through awareness of their 
concordant and responsive repetition in his 
own nerves and brain) were not only great- 
ly deepened and refined, but that his per- 
ception as now of the lowest tone of a great 
organ (32 oscillations per second), began 
at the point now incident to the perception 
of the violet ray, and from that point 
ascended through the whole range of sound, 
light and color, as now from the lowest tone 
of the great organ : 

Then that whole new world of harmonics 
or overtones would simply be a replica of 
the physical plane, but many times intensi- 
fied. 

This would make conceivable a spiritual 
plane or world of spiritual (refined, ethe- 
realized) matter, as a whole, in consonance 
with the physical, yet a whole plane above 
it. Then all that would be required for 



94 Constructive Psychology 

the Individual Intelligence to function on 
that plane, as he now does on the physical, 
would be that refined vibrations in his own 
being should correspond, or be consonant 
with those of that plane. 

There is abundant evidence to show that 
certain individuals do at times catch 
glimpses of this higher plane, but cannot 
command such experiences at will, because 
of their ignorance of the method of con- 
structive psychology, under law; and for 
the further reason, that the vibrations of 
the physical body are discordant in them- 
selves, and drown out the higher vibra- 
tions. The dominant chord is still in the 
body while man is on the physical plane, 
though there seem to be rifts in the clouds 
and interludes in the music. 

If by any known method the individual 
can refine his whole being, and then by his 
own trained will silence all the lusts of the 
flesh and concentrate his awareness on the 
spiritual plane, there is no reason why he 



Secret of Power 95 

cannot perceive and function there as he 
now does here on the physical plane. 

Glimpses without number have been em- 
pirically gained. Constructive Psychology, 
possessed of a real Science of the Soul, pro- 
poses the self-mastery and self -refinement 
that shall endow man with the power to 
demonstrate his own independence and sur- 
vival of the change called death. 

It is no more remarkable that man should 
be able to control his perceptions — to see, 
or not to see — than that he should control 
his actions — act, or refuse to act. 

Empirical facts illustrate man's real pos- 
session of these latent powers.* 

*STRANGE LAND 



Full of Beautiful Scenes Where Deceased Kin Dwells 
Seen by Woman Thought Dead. 



[Enquirer, July 15.] 
Special Dispatch to The Enquirer. 

Waterbury, Conn., July 14. — Mrs. William McNulty, 
of New Britain, had been pronounced dead and all 
arrangements made for her funeral, when Dr. Mulligan 
had a premonition that all was not right. He went 
for his electrical apparatus, and, working for more 
than an hour, began to see signs of life. 



96 Constructive Psychology 

The soldier on the battlefield often is un- 
conscious of the fact that he is seriously 
wounded till the battle is over or he falls 
from loss of blood. Enthusiasm, or the 
passion of strife, becomes the dominant 
chord of his being and silences all lower 
vibrations. An arm or a leg may have been 
shot away, or the individual found dead 
with his gun at his shoulder, or with his 
hand raised in salute or command, and still 
astride his horse. 

There is not a principle invoked in Con- 
structive Psychology that has not been 
empirically demonstrated as true a thou- 
sand times. 

There is not a faculty or capacity re- 



Suddenly the woman sat up, amazed at the sur- 
roundings, and exclaimed: 

"Oh, I have been in a strange land, a long ways off, 
where I saw the strangest and most beautiful objects, 
some old, some young. I saw my poor, dear mother, 
dead long ago, and a relative dead 30 years, and 
many others I used to know and love. The sensa- 
tion was the most beautiful I ever experienced. The 
place was indescribably attractive and alluring, and 
illuminated not by the sun, moon or stars, but by some 
magnificent light of intense softness, remarkably pene- 
trating and of wonderful brilliancy." 



Secret of Poiver 97 

quired for functioning on the higher plane 
that has not again and again been empiri- 
cally proved to be latent in man, and to act 
at times spontaneously or under peculiar 
conditions independent of his will. 

Constructive Psychology simply reduces 
them to law and order, and utilizes by 
knowledge and personal effort the princi- 
ples of the Science of the Soul. 

In other words, Psychic Science may do 
for man, the Individual Intelligence, what 
physical science has done for the arts and 
crafts, for manufacture and all the com- 
forts and conveniences of modern life. 

The meaning of life, the beneficence of 
opportunity, the reward of personal effort 
and high ideals, the promise, the method, 
the potency, the power, and the great re- 
ward of man's higher evolution, may be 
discerned here as nowhere else. 

It ought to banish despair, put a stop to 
suicide, and cause the fortunate sons and 
daughters of man to pause, and realize 
their personal responsibility for them- 



98 Constructive Psychology 

selves, and toward others. Here lies the 
greatest of all opportunities possible to 
man, toward which all who will may aspire 
and build. 



CONSTRUCTIVE PSYCHOLOGY 

The really scientific schools of today 
undertake to furnish the materials and 
endow the student with theoretical, techni- 
cal and practical knowledge along given 
lines. 

Art, skill, utility and practical work are 
the aim and more or less the result. 

The lines that separate theory from law 
are recognized and defined. 

The student so educated is capable and 
full of resources for practical work in life. 
He can plan, organize and execute. This 
is education in the broadest and most exact 
sense. It dratvs out the faculties, capaci- 
ties and powers of the individual, and by 
cultivation endows him with resources. 

Constructive Psychology is this same 
method applied directly to self-knowledge, 
self-control, self-power and self-develop- 

99 



100 Constructive Psychology 

ment. It is theoretical, technical and prac- 
tical knowledge of self. This is "Prag- 
matism," according to the latest nomen- 
clature. 

What is man ? What are his powers and 
resources? How can he possess and utilize 
themf 

If these questions can be definitely and 
correctly answered, and this knowledge 
utilized, it will lead to power and the 
growth of the Soul. 

Constructive Psychology is, therefore, 
the building of character by personal effort, 
under natural law, along lines of least re- 
sistance, greatest progress and utility, and 
secures the best and most lasting results. 

We deal here with facts, with self-evident 
propositions, and appeal to common sense, 
to the observation and common experience 
of mankind. Categories, theories, theolo- 
gies, philosophies, " authorities' ' and tra- 
ditions are largely laid aside. They may 
justify and confirm, but they cannot be 
relied upon as guides, because they are so 



Constructive Psychology 101 

incomplete and contradictory. But the stu- 
dent well drilled in Constructive Psychol- 
ogy may review them with more or less 
profit. 

Man — for the purpose of this study — is 
an Individual Intelligence; God — the Uni- 
versal Intelligence; Nature — the field of 
manifestation, embodiment, outward dis- 
play. 

Man, God, and Nature intrinsically are 
One; that is, they cannot be essentially at 
cross-purposes. 

Otherwise, law, order, harmony and equi- 
librium would be inconceivable. 

Constructive Psychology aims to put 
man in harmony with both God and Nature 
in order to secure harmony in his own life, 
and the greatest power and highest evolu- 
tion to the individual. Man can become 
Master over Nature by knowing, conform- 
ing to, and utilizing Nature's laws and 
processes. 

The well-known facts of Physiology and 
the functions of the physical organism may 



102 Constructive Psychology 

be appealed to, and by analogy they justify 
our conclusions in Psychology. 

Physiology begins with the physical body 
as a living organism, and as an empirical 
fact. 

Psychology begins with the Individual 
Intelligence, manifesting in and through 
the body, equally as an empirical fact. This 
Individual Intelligence has heretofore been 
considered incidental, more or less fortu- 
itous, rather a by-product of the physio- 
logical organism. 

We begin from the other side of the 
equation. When our problem is solved, 
these two terms, so far as the present life 
is concerned, may "backward and forward 
still spell the same." 

They are certainly very definitely related 
and interdependent, and our point of de- 
parture is very clear. As physiologists, we 
deal with the physical body. As psycholo- 
gists we deal with the Individual Intelli- 
gence. 

The functions and phenomena of life are 



Constructive Psychology 103 

to the physical body what the functions and 
phenomena of Consciousness are to the 
Individual Intelligence. The primary en- 
dowment (that which is first and basic) of 
the organic body is Life. The primary 
endowment of the Individual Intelligence is 
Consciousness. 

In our study of man we are studying the 
principles, functions, phenomena, processes 
and laws of Individual, Conscious Life. 

Mind is the activity, the process, the 
phenomena, and the sum of our states of 
consciousness, the theater in which we act. 

The Individual Intelligence is aware of 
its states, conditions and changes in con- 
sciousness. 

This awareness may be latent, reminis- 
cent, or active. It is a fact related to the 
past and the present, but cannot directly 
anticipate the future. 

A single act of the Individual Intelli- 
gence in consciousness, whether of thought, 
feeling, or relation, constitutes a Percept. 

A single group of percepts, involving the 



104 Constructive Psychology 

past awareness with the present, consti- 
tutes a Recept. 

Awareness of percepts and recepts, with 
intelligent discernment of their order, rela- 
tions and sequence, constitutes a Concept, 
and the trend discerned may forecast the 
future. 

This power of discrimination and dis- 
cernment involves Memory and constitutes 
Reason. 

Memory results from, and is the record 
of, previous experience. 

Eeason is thus, awareness of facts, inci- 
dents, experiences and results, in their 
orderly relation in time, and sequence of 
values as " cause' ' and "effect." Such 
reason gives rise to Judgment, or Knowl- 
edge. 

That which experiences, perceives, re- 
members, compares, combines, learns and 
knows, is the Individual Intelligence. 

We may compare Consciousness to a 
circle or a sphere that continually enlarges 
or expands through experience. 



Constructive Psychology 105 

Then the Individual Intelligence is the 
point at the center of the circle or sphere. 
These are symbols. 

This one point, which the Individual In- 
telligence is, maintains its conscious iden- 
tity (awareness of self) in the midst of all 
experience, or changes in its states, changes 
and conditions of consciousness. 

It thus may be seen that consciousness is 
the primary endowment of Individual 
Intelligence. Consciousness changes, while 
the Individual Intelligence does not. Just 
as the body grows and develops under its 
life endowment, so the Individual Intelli- 
gence grows and develops in its endowment 
of consciousness. 

Consciousness is to man what space is to 
Nature. "The all-container," the ''thing- 
in-itself, ,? the noumenon, in the midst of all 
phenomena, is the Individual Intelligence. 

On account of its continued awareness of 
self, it is called the Ego. 
On account of its persistent, conscious 



106 Constructive Psychology 

unity and self-identity, it is the Soul 
(Psyche). 

Life and consciousness, like space, are 
passive. An organism endowed with the 
potency of life, moves, acts, "lives." 

An Individual Intelligence endowed with 
consciousness, thinks, reasons, designs, re- 
members, hopes, fears and acts. 

In Constructive Psychology our view- 
point is changed from that of all other 
methods of study, and well-ascertained 
facts group themselves in different order. 

No new element is admitted, except as 
new facts are discovered, and the method 
of using these new facts is simply to allow 
them to fall into their natural order and 
sequence with those previously known. Our 
view of the whole problem of self-knowl- 
edge thus continually will be enlarged, but 
from first to last held strictly to the basis 
of awareness of the Individual Intelligence 
(self-consciousness) and personal expe- 
rience. 
This basis of self-conscious individual 



Constructive Psychology 107 

experience is universal. Individuals differ 
as to the "content of consciousness, ' ' as 
to the range and variety of individual expe- 
rience; as to aims and indeals; as to mo- 
tives in life; as to tastes, tendencies, bias, 
capacities and powers ; as to resources and 
environment. 

But the essential elements, the primary 
endowment, the generic qualities, in all that 
goes to make man, the Genus Homo — these 
are everywhere the same. 

Here is unity of endowment as to essen- 
tial nature, and endless diversity and limit- 
less variation as to personal experience and 
acquired adjustment. 

The meaning and the evident l 'design' ' 
of this "Unity in diversity' ' is Selfhood; 
otherwise they are inconceivable. 

This selfhood is a fact'm nature and in 
the awareness of every human being. This 
fact is empirical and basic. It needs nei- 
ther argument nor demonstration. From 
the dawn of consciousness in the child and 
in all subsequent unfolding of experience, 



108 Constructive Psychology 

awareness of self, conscious self -identity, 
the "self and the non-self," "I," "me," 
' c mine, ' ' are the basis from which individ- 
ual life proceeds and unfolds. 

With all the diversity of life and of indi- 
vidual experience, here is the "eternal 
cell, ' ' the abiding Unity. Because we may 
not be able to give its essential anatomy, 
chemistry and kinetics ; dissect it, or show 
it under the microscope (or, as Ernest 
Haeckel rather childishly suggests, "ex- 
hibit it in a bottle," or by "lowering of 
temperature and increase of pressure . . . 
solidify it — to produce 'soul snow' "). 
Childish nonsense under the name of "Sci- 
ence" has never perhaps transcended this. 

We are aware of the existence of matter 
and of the physical universe only in terms 
of self-conscious experience, and our 
awareness of self-identity and persistent 
unity is in the same terms. 

Constructive Psychology, therefore, be- 
gins with these empirical facts in personal 
experience : 



Constructive Psychology 109 

Man is a self-conscious Individual Intelli- 
gence. 

The physical body or living organism is 
the agency, vehicle or mechanism through 
which the Individual Intelligence contacts 
the world and acts on the physical plane 
in space and time, and, more or less, se- 
cures self-adjustment, growth, develop- 
ment, power, or evolution — in other words, 
experience. 

The laws and processes that determine, 
promote, retard or defeat this self -develop- 
ment of the Individual Intelligence, must be 
regarded as of the first interest and 
importance. 

These laws are natural, fundamental, 
inalienable, as are the general laws of 
organic evolution. 

Outwardly, we have "the struggle for 
existence, natural selection, and the sur- 
vival of the fittest." 

Inwardly, we have the struggle for self- 
adjustment, and self-perfection, through 
rational volition and personal effort. 



110 Constructive Psychology 

These two processes are coincident and 
more or less inseparable from the begin- 
ning. That they should be essentially an- 
tagonistic is inconceivable in a universe 
governed by law. This would be like a 
builder constructing an edifice from bricks 
that had neither continuity nor perma- 
nency. 

The fact that individuals constituting 
humanity are continually changing is off- 
set by the fact that the evolution of these 
individuals is continually on the rise; and 
that this status of the masses in any given 
group, or at any time, may rise or fall, 
depending on the integrity and personal 
efforts of individuals. 

Constructive Psychology deals first and 
essentially with the individual. While it 
takes cognizance of all that nature and 
society have done or may do for man, it 
is especially concerned with what the indi- 
vidual can do for himself. The perfection 
of the individual is impossible and incon- 
ceivable from anything we know of man, 



Constructive Psychology 111 

except through personal effort in conso- 
nance with natural and universal law. 

As already shown, the struggle for exist- 
ence concerns, first, the aggregate, and sec- 
ondly the individual. The struggle for self- 
perfection concerns, first, the individual, 
and afterward the aggregate, though both 
processes are more or less simultaneous 
and coincident. 

This is saying that humanity is composed 
of an aggregate of individuals, and that 
this implies both individual and corporate 
laws, relations, processes and results. 

Constructive Psychology is essentially 
the individual problem of self -development, 
self-mastery and self-perfection. 

No one will deny that what man does 
reacts upon himself, and so determines 
what he is. And as continual adjustment is 
a basic proposition in human evolution, it 
is equally true in the whole series of expe- 
riences constituting human life and indi- 
vidual experience, that what a man really 



112 Constructive Psychology 

is, at any given time, will determine what 
lie does. 

" Cause and effect" are simply the rela- 
tion of groups of phenomena in nature, or 
of groups of events or experiences in life 
as occurring in Time. Movement, or the 
impulse to action, involves "past," "pres- 
ent" and "future" time. Experience 
(past) determines capacity (present) and 
forecasts the possibilities (future re- 
sources) of the individual. 

In all this ceaseless change — in atom, 
molecule and mass; in cell, organ and or- 
ganism — incident to life and consciousness, 
with readjustment continually taking place, 
the self-identity of the Individual Intelli- 
gence remains essentially the same. 

We realize change, growth, evolution or 
degeneracy, and yet we realize our self- 
identity. This cannot be accidental or for- 
tuitous. It is too plain, persistent and self- 
evident. It is, for many, the one reality. 
We cannot get rid of it if we try. We 
can think in no other terms than these. 



Constructive Psychology 113 

All else originates in and proceeds from 
this awareness of self. 

We may destroy the body, but we have 
no evidence that we can obliterate this self- 
identity. Nor need it here be claimed that 
we cannot destroy it, for we are dealing 
only with the present life. 

All we need to know is that this Indi- 
vidual Intelligence manifests on the physi- 
cal plane in space and time through the 
agency of the human organism. Whether it 
exists independently of the organism, and 
can manifest on a sub- or supra-physical 
plane, is a question of fact, subject to dem- 
onstration only, and, I believe, a question 
still of individual experience or awareness. 

We have, then, the Self-conscious Indi- 
vidual Intelligence as the first factor in 
Constructive Psychology. 

We find, as a matter of fact, that this 
Individual Intelligence has the power of 
Initiative. It can do things. Internally, it 
thinks, feels, desires, remembers, imagines, 
loves, hates, etc., etc. Externally it acts 



114 Constructive Psychology 

through the bodily organism to express 
these internal states and conditions. 

In all this initiative it uses, consciously or 
unconsciously, the organs of the physical 
body, or the body as a whole. That is to 
say, its awareness of the processes through 
which it acts, or is in turn acted upon, 
through repeated use has become automatic 
or subconscious in many directions. 

Consciousness is latent, diffused, generic, 
like the Life-principle in the body of man. 
Self -consciousness is that aspect or relation 
which the Individual Intelligence bears to 
this generic principle at any given time, or 
in the whole life series of experiences, initi- 
atives, awareness, or actions. Put in other 
terms : 

Consciousness is diffused and abstract. 

Self-consciousness is specific and con- 
crete. 

The higher the evolution of the individ- 
ual, the more clear and specific becomes 
this line of cleavage between the abstract 



Constructive Psychology 115 

and the concrete, between the self and the 
non-self. 

The general law of evolution provides 
that differentiation and organization shall 
supplement and not antagonize each other. 
Were it otherwise, differentiation long ago 
would have modified man into something 
else than human, or out of existence. 

Thus the laws and processes by which 
God or Nature pushes upward the evolu- 
tion of the human race as a whole toward 
perfection are supplemented by the laws 
and processes by which the Individual 
Intelligence perfects itself through per- 
sonal effort. Differentiation is supple- 
mented by integration, and continual read- 
justment. 

The initiative, in the individual, is not, in 
its higher aspect, antagonistic to the gen- 
eral trend of evolution, but may altogether 
supplement and advance it. This is but a 
higher aspect of "the struggle for exist- 
ence and the survival of the fittest.' ' The 
general law of evolution seemingly pushes 



116 Constructive Psychology 

the evolution of the race at the sacrifice of 
individuals. 

The individual 's efforts to perfect himself 
might seemingly ignore the welfare of the 
race. The materialism of Nietzsche and 
Haeckel discerns only this apparent antag- 
onism. Such views are altogether super- 
ficial and unscientific. 

The power of initiative is thus primarily 
and basic in the Individual Intelligence. 
This is an empirical fact, self-evident from 
all experience and observation. It is like 
saying that the being we call Man, does 
things. 

Passing by for the moment the mere im- 
pulses to action, those that lie rather on the 
automatic side of the individual equation, 
and considering the initiative in a more 
highly evolved individual, we find that his 
status in the scale of evolution depends 
upon and is determined by his rational 
volition. 

This means that he uses his organism, 
and his environment, his faculties, capaci- 



Constructive Psychology 117 

ties, powers and opportunities in such a 
way as more nearly to insure a given result. 
He combines these elements according to 
order, sequence and co-operative expe- 
rience. The means and methods he employs 
are not at cross-purposes, to defeat what he 
desires to accomplish. In other words, he 
is more or less conforming to law, which 
law he has discovered by previous expe- 
rience. 

This power of initiative, exercised by the 
Individual Intelligence under rational voli- 
tion, is called the Will. 

Divested of rational volition, or domi- 
nated by blind, unreasoning desire, it is 
called Impulse, or Passion, according to 
degree. 

The ' i will-to-live ' ' bears the same rela- 
tion to vital energy, or the Life-principle, 
that consciousness bears to self-conscious- 
ness. 

Eational volition bears the same relation 
to mere impulse, or passion, that intelligent 
choice bears to blind animal instinct. 



118 Constructive Psychology 

Eational volition is a higher evolution of 
the power of initiative in the individual. It 
adds discriminative judgment to the im- 
pulse to action, and anticipates results. 

The discussion of Free Will, fate, des- 
tiny, ' ' f oreordination, ' ' etc., has filled 
whole libraries, which today are useless, 
obsolete, and might as well be burned. The 
question is not whether the will of man, 
generically, is free. The fact is, that the 
will of the individual may become free, and 
he may exercise the power of initiative by 
intelligent choice and rational volition, 
through self-control and personal effort. 

Just so far as man learns to control him- 
self is he in line with nature's laws, and 
by self-mastery he may become master of 
these laws. 

The more highly evolved individuals of 
the race manifest self-control and free 
choice, and exercise rational volition. They 
are more highly evolved because they do 
this, and they do this because they are more 
highly evolved. It works both ways, ac- 



Constructive Psychology 119 

cording to the law or sequence of " cause' ' 
and "effect." Every point in individual 
evolution gained by personal effort helps 
to secure the next step in advance. The 
evolutionary impulse is cumulative. 

Constructive Psychology is the building 
of character by personal effort, as already 
shown, and it is only another name for the 
normal, progressive, higher evolution of 
man under natural and psychical law. This 
is readily discerned by comparing the low- 
est types of individuals with the highest. 
The animal instincts and impulses recede, 
as the Individual Intelligence evolves. 
"Natural Selection" is first supplemented 
by psychical, and at last superseded by 
"Divine Selection." Or, in Platonic lan- 
guage, ' ' the animal becomes a man, and the 
man a god." These terms are relative, 
evolutionary, and are justified by facts and 
observation. 

If the materialist demands a sight of the 
"god," we may with equal justice demand 
the ' ' missing link. ' ' We are studying evo- 



120 Constructive Psychology 

hitionary processes, the beginning and the 
end of which are equally concealed, but the 
trend of which is everywhere in evidence. 

With the foregoing elements that go to 
the building of character by personal effort, 
there dawns, unfolds and develops the 
sense of personal responsibility. This 
means, first, self-adjustment, and, second, 
adjustment of the individual to his fellow- 
men. 

Freedom to act, in whatsoever degree, 
involves personal responsibility for action, 
in just that degree. 

While this is a basic proposition in indi- 
vidual evolution, it is also recognized as a 
fact in society and in all human relations 
and associations. 

The laws of all civilized communities and 
nations are the logical, practical and inevi- 
table outgrowth of this basic principle in 
individual life and in race evolution. 

The sphere of individual liberty, the 
initiative, the free choice of the individual, 
is circumscribed by and strictly held to 



Constructive Psychology 121 

account through this principle of personal 
responsibility. The individual declares : l i I 
will do as I please. ' ' Society replies : ' l We 
will hold you strictly responsible for what 
you do. ' ' Nature echoes : " So will I. ' 9 

However this initiative of the individual 
may be disguised by indirection or con- 
cealed by fraud and cunning, the principle 
remains true. 

But we are dealing here with construct- 
ive psychology rather than constructive 
sociology, and while the two are funda- 
mentally inseparable, our viewpoint now is 
rather the individual. 

What we call Conscience is the recogni- 
tion by the individual of personal responsi- 
bility. Every rational and intelligent indi- 
vidual holds himself responsible to himself 
for his acts. Whatever may be his sense of 
justice, or his code of ethics, he condemns 
or approves his own acts, desires, motives, 
aims and impulses accordingly. 

The fact that no two individuals may rec- 
ognize the same standards of justice, equity 



122 Constructive Psychology 

and right, is only another way of saying 
that no two individuals are the same. 

The fact that individuals are influenced 
by heredity, environment and association, 
changes the conditions as to freedom of 
action and degree of responsibility, but not 
the fact of that responsibility. Otherwise, 
the building of character by personal effort 
would be inconceivable, and individual evo- 
lution impossible. 

Man is not an irresponsible automaton, 
but a self-conscious individual intelligence, 
with rational volition and personal respon- 
sibility; and only as he uses his faculties, 
capacities and powers according to the laws 
of his being can he evolve to higher planes. 
If he acts contrary to these laws he suffers, 
" repents/ ' "reforms," and so gains 
knowledge of these laws, and discerns the 
lines of least resistance, greatest power and 
truest happiness through experience. 

He is enabled to do this through the ad- 
monitions of " Conscience,' ' which is the 
recognition of personal responsibility. We 



Constructive Psychology 123 

call this "personal integrity, ' ' that which 
integrates or bnilds up the Individual In- 
telligence as a whole. 

There are few theologies or codes of eth- 
ics that clearly define and give sufficient 
importance to this principle of personal 
responsibility, while some of them under- 
take to ignore or annul it altogether. 

It is a basic law in human evolution and 
of the first importance in character-build- 
ing or constructive psychology. 

The effort to formulate and enforce a 
uniform standard of morals has always 
more or less failed, for the simple reason 
that the principles defined appealed with 
different degrees of force to persons of dif- 
ferent degrees of intelligence, recognizing 
in varying degrees their own personal re- 
sponsibility, though the principles defined 
might be good for the race as a whole. Only 
force or fraud has ever caused them to 
be accepted or adopted by any large num- 
ber of individuals at any given time. 

Here lies the struggle between individual 



124 Constructive Psychology 

liberty, and creed, dogma, authority and 
despotism. It is only another phase of the 
struggle for existence of the race, and the 
personal effort of the individual for self- 
perfection. The perfected individual will 
discover no discrepancy or antagonism be- 
tween his own highest good and the well- 
being of humanity as a whole. 

Constructive Psychology is the process 
of arriving at this result through personal 
effort, actual experience and the higher 
evolution of the individual. 

Long before he reaches that point he will 
discover that his own advancement depends 
on what he can add to the uplift of the 
whole. The " humane " instincts and im- 
pulses will become " overshadowed " and 
inspired by the ' ' divine. ' ' Just as the race 
impulse to evolution was a vis a tergo, so 
the divine impulse will be a vis a frontce. 

Evolution of the human implies Involu- 
tion of the divine. 

The whole process and trend of evolu- 
tion from animal to man can be no more 



Constructive Psychology 125 

clearly apprehended and defined than that 
upward and onward trend from man, as we 
know him, to something still higher and 
more than man. 

Constructive psychology is not merely 
the formulated philosophy of this higher 
evolution; it is also, and at the same time, 
the work of realizing it as an accomplished 
fact, or a fact in process of being realized. 

The definition now often made use of, 
that "scientific psychology is the study of 
the content of consciousness,' ' is theoreti- 
cal, and may be, to a certain extent, philo- 
sophical ; but in no sense is it constructive 
and complete. The acquirement of real 
knowledge here by actual experience and 
the building of character are inseparable. 

The explanations given of "multiple 
personality, ' ' and certain hypnotic phe- 
nomena, are either superficial, incomplete, 
or wholly false and misinterpreted in many 
cases. The reason for this lies in the fact 
that the Individual Intelligence is either 
ignored as a fact or altogether inadequately 



126 Constructive Psychology 

recognized or apprehended as a fact in the 
life of man. 

Consciousness as a faculty of man can 
not be shown to possess, in any sense, the 
power of initiative; any more than can 
space, devoid of substance and energy. So 
also with the brain cells, nerves, etc. They 
act only as they are acted upon, and they 
both act and react automatically. They 
lack the initiative. 

The Individual Intelligence acts and is 
acted upon, but it may interpose the will 
and refuse to act, thus showing intelligent 
choice in place of mere automatism, or the 
parallelogram of forces alone, as in physics 
and kinetics. 

By thus recognizing the Individual Intel- 
ligence as an empirical fact we are not pri- 
marily postulating the "Soul," but con- 
structive psychology is the only process 
known to man that is likely to lead inevi- 
tably to a knowledge of the Soul as a fact 
of experience. 

Character-building under natural and 



Constructive Psychology 127 

psychical law is soul-building. Man will 
become conscious of his soul precisely as he 
has become conscious of his body — through 
a long series of personal experiences, or 
acts of awareness, use and control. This 
is the only way in which man actually 
learns anything. 

Many persons in all ages have discerned 
these principles more or less clearly, and 
often have acted upon them empirically 
with exceeding good results. The real mys- 
tics of all ages have intuitively perceived 
them, or have been "overshadowed" by the 
light of the supra-physical plane and drawn 
upward as by the lift of wings. 

In a very large proportion of these cases, 
however, there has resulted only a one- 
sided development. They have often be- 
come unbalanced, or diseased, and some- 
times insane. They have conceived it nec- 
essary to " torture the body to save the 

SOul." 

To master the lower nature, and thus to 
command and utilize all the faculties, ca- 



128 Constructive Psychology 

pacities and powers, is the only rational 
and constructive method of the higher evo- 
lution. It regards the health and develop- 
ment of the body as the vehicle of life, and 
of equal importance with the development 
of the soul. The two are inseparable, so 
far as evolutionary processes are concerned 
on the physical plane. 

In the growth and development of the 
physical body an impulse repeatedly sent 
along a given line, or involving a group of 
cells, develops the tissues involved and per- 
fects the function, thus giving rise to auton- 
omy. In like manner, the power to think, 
the ' l habit of thought, " " dominant ideas, ' ' 
concepts, ideals and aims, result from expe- 
rience, and so develop the power of the 
Individual Intelligence. 

The result in the latter case may be as 
automatic as in the former, for growth 
itself is always automatic. 

When, however, intelligent choice, ra- 
tional volition and a sense of personal 
responsibility are recognized, and deter- 



Constructive Psychology 129 

mine the " dominant chord," man becomes 
for the first time master of himself, and 
automatic action proportionally disap- 
pears. Body, brain and the whole organ- 
ism come largely under the dominion of the 
will. The individual is no longer the slave 
of passion, of unreasoning impulse, or of 
habit. 

This dominant chord becomes syn- 
chronous with the harmony of nature and 
sets man free. His " harmonic' ' is no 
longer bound to the animal plane below 
him. It is in tune with the spiritual plane 
above him. It is thus that every principle 
in constructive psychology has its counter- 
part and analogy in physiology and organic 
life. 

The spiritual plane is but the enlarge- 
ment and refinement of the physical. This 
refining process may be established here, 
and may continue from youth to old age 
and " death." Constructive psychology 
and normal evolution are identical. Both 
aim at the perfection of man. 



130 Constructive Psychology 

The diversified activities of human life, 
the range of thought, the content of con- 
sciousness, the speculations and work of 
the imagination, have covered such a wide 
area that amid the endless whirl of ideas, 
percepts and possibilities, it is not at all 
strange that confusion and bewilderment 
and even despair often have been the 
result. 

From this side of the equation it is im- 
possible to discern a definite meaning, or a 
single dominant chord, c£r a Constructive 
Principle. .-% 

But this is what our philosophers are 
striving and still hoping to>do. 

Scientific Psychology, ir£the latest defini- 
tion, is the study by scientific methods of 
the content of consciousness. It is still 
gathering facts and classifying them along 
the line of endless diversity above 
referred to. 

The other side of this life equation is the 
unity of man's essential being, man's 
awareness of his self-identity. It is here 



Constructive Psychology 131 

that the underlying law of unity and per- 
manency may be discerned and applied, 
amid all diversity. 

We have only to compare the directness 
and simplicity of man's conscious, persist- 
ent self -identity, on the one hand, with the 
complex and endless diversity of his expe- 
rience and the " content of his conscious- 
ness,' ' on the other, in order to perceive 
whence must come man's power of control 
of the whole complex mechanism of life. 

He must control himself. He must estab- 
lish and maintain the "dominant chord." 
He must be the Master and not the slave of 
the diversities of impulse and feeling, de- 
sire and passion. 

He must put his house in order and deter- 
mine symmetry in place of confusion. 

He must be a builder in place of a 
wrecker, a scavenger or a prisoner in a 
castle that is tumbling down about his head. 

If there really exists a Constructive 
Principle in Nature and in individual life. 



132 Constructive Psychology 

and yet it can be apprehended and utilized 
only by the most advanced intelligences, its 
practical use and beneficence may justly be 
questioned. 

In that case it might be a fine subject for 
speculation and dialectics by philosophers. 

Nature is everywhere democratic, not 
autocratic. Her laws are universal and she 
is no respecter of persons. 

If this constructive principle is basic and 
universal, then it not only applies to every 
phase or degree of intelligence, but must 
be apprehensible by individuals at every 
stage of evolution. 

And this is the fact. The trouble is, we 
have become confused in the diversities of 
conscious experience, and have failed to 
discern the unity of law in individual effort 
at self-control. 

Mould carefully into the consciousness 
and dawning experience of every child the 
principles of self-control and personal re- 
sponsibility, not as a religious dogma, by 



Constructive Psychology 133 

the mere repetition of words, but as the 
principle back of all conduct, and unbal- 
anced minds, uncontrolled impulses and 
passions, and criminal habits would very 
largely disappear. 

Constructive Psychology is the building 
of individual character by personal effort 
in keeping with the higher evolution of 
man, and it can be apprehended by the child 
as readily as by the philosopher. Only the 
wise comprehend it. 

The child may not understand the phi- 
losophy, but it can realize the principle in 
action, and will be encouraged and gratified 
by the approval of the growing conscience, 
the divinity within. 

Our Juvenile Courts are already operat- 
ing on these lines. 

^Responsibility and self-respect appeal to 
the young intelligence as directly and as 
strongly as do athletics or any other com- 
petitive success. Trust them, and they will 
learn to trust themselves. 



134 Constructive Psychology 

It is far easier to instruct the child than 
to reform the criminal. 

The hope of the world lies in education. 
The real help for man is to learn to help 
and improve himself, by properly directed 
personal effort. 



EDUCATION 

A KETROSPECT AND A PKOSPECT 
A MENACE OK AN EVOLUTION 

The most important bearing of Construc- 
tive Psychology is not the education of a 
few Seers, or even Masters of the Good 
Law, important as these are to the world. 

Its most important relation and applica- 
tion are to the education of the young; to 
put them from childhood beyond the domi- 
nation of ignorance, superstition and fear, 
of self-indulgence and indifference to the 
well-being of others; to teach them self- 
control, justice, kindness, and their own 
personal responsibility. In other words, to 
start them in the way of their own higher 
and progressive evolution; to encourage 
them, trust them, teach them self-reliance 

135 



136 Constructive Psychology 

and aspiration, and how to help themselves. 

Let any really honest and intelligent indi- 
vidual knowing anything of Juvenile Courts, 
early crimes, and the slums of modern life, 
ask himself honestly how the above program 
would compare with what is usually taught 
at home, or picked up on the street by child- 
hood, or with any demonstrated influence of 
the Catechism, or ' ' Now I lay me down to 
sleep, ' ' in after life. 

Ethical instruction ought to begin where 
such early education leaves off. Then it 
may build for righteousness, character and 
usefulness in the world. 

A few generations of such real teaching 
would banish Juvenile Courts and reforma- 
tories for incorrigible childhood. 

Our responsibility here is the greatest 
known to man, because the consequences 
are so far-reaching and lasting. 

The great mass of the community today, 
and the majority of the ignorant and 
vicious hordes imported from the old world, 
so far as they reverence the name or recog- 



Education 137 

nize the claims or the authority of religion 
at all, are Bonian Catholics. 

It is the genius of Clerical Rome to build 
up the Church at any and every cost to 
mankind. Its slogan has been in all ages : 
"Anything and everything for the good of 
Mother Church." The end always is said 
to justify the means employed to this end, 
whatever the means may be. 

The dogma of obedience to the Church 
is the foundation from which it rules all its 
believers, and proposes to rule the world. 
Any such thing as free-choice, rational voli- 
tion, or personal responsibility in its vota- 
ries, is not only avoided by every sophistry 
or subterfuge, but where it touches a dogma 
or an interest of the Church, declared to be 
a deadly sin, the sin of disobedience to the 
Church. 

No such colossal institution for fostering 
and promoting crime and breeding crim- 
inals was ever instituted by the genius or 
the depravity of man. Every principle that 
goes to the building of individual charac- 



138 Constructive Psychology 

ter, self-reliance, self-control and personal 
responsibility, is abrogated in the individ- 
ual and assumed and sophisticated by the 
Church. 

The Church today in America is using its 
immense wealth and resources everywhere 
to rush the building of parochial schools in 
order to keep its children from the influ- 
ence of our. Free Schools and hold them in 
the bondage of ignorance, superstition and 
fear. 

No such issue as this has ever before 
been raised in this country nor on any such 
magnitude in the world. Kepeatedly the 
demand has been made for a division of 
the school fund, with the threat of refusing 
to pay the tax unless the division is made. 

Our Free Public Schools, imperfect as 
they may be, are the bulwark of Freedom 
and Civilization; but they are held by the 
Church as inimical to, or tending to under- 
mine, its dogma of blind obedience and 
authority over the young. 

One of the most intelligent and fearless 



Education 139 

of Catholic Priests has taken as the title 
of his book : 

"The Parochial School 
The Curse of the Church 

and the 
Menace of the Nation." 

If one needs an object-lesson, as to what 
the Church can do in holding back civiliza- 
tion and degrading a whole people by its 
teaching, its example, its dogmas and des- 
potism, let him study present conditions in 
Southern Europe, or read Father McGra- 
dy's article on the subject in The Arena 
for July, 1907. 

Everywhere in the old world the people 
are freeing themselves from this blight of 
paganism, by repudiating the authority of 
the Church with all its greed and des- 
potism. 

These victims of superstition and exploi- 
tation are coming to America by the mil- 
lion every year, impoverished and de- 



140 Constructive Psychology 

graded, ignorant, rebellious toward all 
authority, particularly toward anything in 
the name of religion, though they may out- 
wardly, from the momentum of education 
and habit, satisfy their consciences by its 
mass and its mummeries. 

The Mafia are merely the scum ferment- 
ed in the schools of the Church, and that 
rises to the surface as civilization, advances. 

Today, as I write, the ' ' Great Republican 
Convention" is in session at Chicago, but 
not a newspaper nor a politician in the 
United States dares even name this great 
issue. The power of the Church has them 
gagged by boycott and a solid Catholic 
vote. 

If the Catholic Church can demand a 
division of the school fund in favor of the 
parochial school, every other denomination 
has an equal right to make the same de- 
mand; and when a. single precedent is thus 
established, our Free Secular Schools will 
be at an end. 

The people of this "Free Country" will 



Education 141 

be compelled to decide whether they have 
the right to maintain Free Public Schools 
or not, or whether they will allow a foreign 
and despotic power to undermine and over- 
throw them and inaugurate dogma and 
superstition in their place, with the inevi- 
table result of pauperage and crime such as 
have been thus brought about in Southern 
Europe. 

We are today not only permitting this 
abomination to progress here, unchecked, 
but we are paying as a people the price of 
its collapse in the old world by attempting 
to civilize and assimilate its victims by the 
million every year. 

Eome has not only pauperized the people 
wherever it has gained power and held 
sway, but has at last impoverished itself. 
The expenses of the "Holy See" are today 
borne by contributions largely from foreign 
countries. 

It thus may be seen how vital and basic 
is this whole question of education. It is 
the one great problem in America today. 



142 Constructive Psychology 

No other issue is worth mentioning beside 
it ; and yet, as a people, we utterly ignore 
it and allow ourselves to be sophisticated 
and tricked out of our rights, thereby 
ignoring our plain duty as a "Free 
People. ' ' 

The higher education of men and women, 
and progress of the individual along the 
lines of the higher evolution discussed in 
the foregoing pages, depend, first, on the 
early education of the child in principles of 
morality and justice. 

As a people we not only have the right 
but the manifest duty of determining what 
shall constitute good citizenship. We are 
bound to insist that the demon of dogma 
and despotism, under the guise of religion, 
shall not demoralize the young, and so lead 
to vice and crime. 

We may, if we choose, continue to sleep 
and remain indifferent ; but we shall find it 
impossible to escape the penalty for our 
folly and supineness. 

Our boasted "Free Press" is gagged 



Education 143 

almost universally already by threatened 
boycott, and the enemy of all our free insti- 
tutions works twenty-four hours a day un- 
molested to accomplish its purpose. Dog- 
matism, despotism, degeneracy and devo- 
lution is the "four-footed beast of the 
Apocalypse" as revealed today by the 
agents of the Eoman Vatican in the United 
States. 

It took many centuries for this same 
power under another name to undermine 
the civilization of ancient Egypt. Two or 
three decades more of our folly and supine- 
ness here will enable monks, mass and 
mummeries to reduce our boasted civiliza- 
tion to open strife, revolution or desolation. 

The power of the Church is immense. Its 
wealth and resources, which can at any 
moment be focalized at one point by votes 
and the dogma of obedience, are without 
parallel or rival. Its hold upon these re- 
sources depends upon keeping the people in 
bondage. Hence the hostility everywhere 



144 Constructive Psychology 

manifest toward our Free Secular Public 
Schools. 

But in the face of all this power and pre- 
tense, bolstered up by graft in politics, by 
cunning and subterfuge, by boycott and 
Jesuitry, the strongest asset of the Eoman 
Church is the supineness and indifference 
of the mass of our citizens outside the 
Church, who permit this exploitation with- 
out protest. 

Two-thirds of the teachers employed in 
the largest cities of America are Catholics. 
We boast of our "Free Institutions' ' and 
grow emotional over our "educational ad- 
vantages, " and yet we employ as teachers 
those pledged to obedience to that power 
which hates our Free Schools and is doing 
its utmost to undermine and destroy them. 
This is Modernism with a vengeance ! 

The Roman Cleric and his Hierarchy 
may justly and contemptuously laugh over 
our cowardly indifference. We are "too 
easy" to command even his respect, though 
we are well worth exploiting and plucking. 



Education 145 

The cleric is loyal to his demoralized in- 
stincts, his traditions, his vows of obe- 
dience, and he reaps his harvest in joy and 
exultation. The crime is ours in permitting 
it, and Froude, the historian, called such 
conduct "pusillanimous." 

When the harvest is ripe we shall pay 
the penalty in shame and sorrow, if not in 
a new "Keign of Terror/ ' 

Mexico, France, Italy, and even benight- 
ed and priest-ridden Spain, have aivakened 
from the apathy and exploitation of cen- 
turies, and today we are simply harboring 
their cast-off fetters, inviting their degra- 
dation, and allowing them to find harbor 
here for the graduates of clerical training. 

We bluster, and threaten individual an- 
archists who are but the blossom and the 
fruit; and yet we harbor the hotbed that 
nourished them, and supinely witness here 
in our very midst the transplanting and 
growth of the tree that bore them, till it 
casts its upas shadow over all our fair land. 

The average citizen ought to go to school 



146 Constructive Psychology 

long enough to be able to read the hand- 
writing on the wall, or cease to call himself 
a citizen. 

The Parochial School is the "school for 
the more general diffusion of ignorance/ ' 
and its teachers are masters of the art of 
suppressing enlightenment or anything 
deserving the name of education. These 
schools are rising like magic on every avail- 
able corner or desirable site in every city 
in this country, and as they increase our 
Free Schools will decrease. 

Already the cleric declares that presently 
the demand for a division of the school 
fund will be more than a ' ' demand ; ' ' it will 
be a writ of execution. The edict of the 
Pope's Delegate any day could close the 
public schools in Boston, New York and 
Chicago, as effectually as he could lock the 
doors of a cathedral and proclaim a day of 
jubilee, or "fasting and prayer." 

He will do it when he gets a good ready, 
and he is getting ready very fast. l ' What 
fools we mortals be." Our only possible 



Education 147 

hope is in the education of the citizen, in his 
enlightenment as to what is going on under 
his very nose. 

King's "Facing the Twentieth Century" 
and Father Crowley's "The Parochial 
School" might do for beginners. An eye 
on the daily press and the ' ' doings ' ' of the 
Chnrch might complete the education. He 
will look in vain for any note of warning 
or protest from the ' ' Conservators of our 
Liberties," the newspapers. They are 
generally fixed! 

Our ignorance, indifference and supine- 
ness constitute a crime, unequaled, against 
citizenship. 

It is treason against God, Nature and our 
fellowmen, far worse than insulting or de- 
fying our "starry banner,' ' which might 
justly, even now, bear a stripe of black 
amid the ' l red, white and blue, ' ' emblematic 
of the power and the petticoat of the 
Eoman Cleric in these United States. 

If we permit the alliance to be formed 
and perpetuated much longer, we ought to 



148 Constructive Psychology 

sail under our true colors and proclaim it 
to the world. 

The work of the Roman Cleric in this 
country, as throughout the world, compared 
with any other known propaganda, is like 
the work of the burglar and the sneak-thief 
as compared to that of honest labor. They 
sneak in at every open door or window, take 
advantage of our confidence or generosity, 
threaten, cajole, or use the chloroform of 
religious mummery; but they abuse our 
tolerance even while condemning it, and 
steal our liberties like very brigands. 

We need not blame them, for they are 
educated and "built that way/' and cannot 
help it. The pity of it, however, is that 
they are here to educate our children and 
citizens in the same school of dogma and 
obedience. 

Every free-born American citizen is to 
blame for permitting it. No child educated 
in freedom of conscience, rational volition, 
common kindness toward others, and per- 
sonal responsibility, could indeed ever be- 



Education 149 

come a t ' good Catholic ' ' ; for no good Cath- 
olic is ever permitted to exercise these God- 
given faculties, capacities and powers, that 
go toward the building of a noble, self- 
controlled, well-poised character. It is for 
the interest of Mother Church to keep them 
in ignorance, that they may be exploited, 
controlled, deceived and robbed. 

The clownish mummery of the Mass, the 
espionage and detective service of auricu- 
lar confession, the demoralized fraud of 
vicarious atonement, — these are the hea- 
thenish substitutes for morals, palmed off 
as "Beligion" in the name of Jesus. 

Constructive Psychology and the educa- 
tion it inaugurates are to the human soul 
what the bath, normal exercise and whole- 
some food are to the health of the human 
body. 

Eeligion, in its noblest and best sense, the 
real religion of Jesus, and the purest 
morals spring as naturally from this con- 
structive foundation as zest and the joy of 
life spring from the health of the body. 



150 Constructive Psychology 

Clericalism overturns and subverts all 
this and puts in its place a nightmare of the 
soul, the ghosts and demons of superstition 
and fear, and leaves its victims degraded, 
demoralized, impoverished, and at last law- 
less and revengeful. 

No power on earth has ever so degraded 
and brutalized mankind as this. 

This issue is here today. It is here to 
stay until it is determined. Our Free Secu- 
lar Public Schools are on one side, and the 
priest-ridden Parochial Schools on the 
other; and the Parochial Schools are fast 
gaining ground and will presently dictate 
terms. 

No Catholic in full communion should 
ever be permitted to teach in our Free 
Schools. 

All church property should be taxed, the 
same as any other. 

We should fight "till doomsday' ' any 
attempt at a "division of the school fund." 

The Parochial Schools, so far as secular 
education is concerned, should be, like 



Education 151 

every other, under the examination and 
control of State Examiners, not one of 
whom should ever be a Catholic. 

We should take Eome at its own word, 
let it stand on its own record; and we, as 
Free American Citizens, should stand on 
ours. 

We should not interfere with the Cath- 
olic religion, as such, but we should narrow 
its political claims and significance down 
to the simplest terms, and insist that Eome 
let our politics and our Free Schools 
severely and everlastingly alone. 

Education is the one great fundamental 
question today in these United States. 

The education herein proposed is the 
building of character upon the foundation 
of intelligent free choice and individual 
self-control, inspired by common honesty 
and common kindness, the principles of jus- 
tice, equity and fraternity. 

Can any intelligent and honest man or 
woman except a Catholic deny the truth or 
the importance, or doubt the results and 



152 Constructive Psychology 

the beneficence of building character along 
these lines? 

Was any noble character known to man 
or recorded in human history ever built 
along any other lines! 

The appeal herein made is to common 
intelligence, common sense and common 
honesty. We are trying to build a new, 
a broader, better and more enlightened 
civilization. 

Materialism in all its forms and under 
many names, stands arrayed against this 
common good by denying God and the exist- 
ence of the human soul, considering man 
as an improved animal and nothing more, 
and leaving him without aspiration or the 
hope of fruition. 

On the other side of man's freedom and 
highest good stands the blighting curse of 
Popery, seeking to hold man in ignorance 
in order to control him. 

There is no real progress for man along 
either of these lines. All real progress 
hitherto has been on middle ground in 



Education 153 

spite of these, by repudiating equally the 
blighting curse of materialism and the 
slavish dogmas of clericalism. Every step 
of real progress has been made in spite of 
both of these. 

Is it not time that both should be openly 
repudiated and defied? 

As it is, we make our obeisance to both 
alike, because of the dignity and authority 
of "Science," so-called, and because of 
the respectability and sanctity of ecclesias- 
ticism, or "Beligion," so-called. This is 
considered ' ' good form, ' ' though few intel- 
legent persons believe in the authority of 
the one, or in the sanctity of the other. 

Each of these institutions stands as a foil 
to the other, and plays shuttlecock with the 
intelligence of mankind. 

It is not i i scientific ' ' to admit as a fact 
the existence of the human soul, till some 
authority in science sets the pace or gives 
assent. Then we are permitted, without 
being considered silly, to make our obei- 
sance to our own Individual Intelligence, 



154 Constructive Psychology 

and to say for the first time (above a whis- 
per) "I am that I am." 

It is not "orthodox" to do your own 
thinking from your own standards of jus- 
tice, equity and right, and endeavor to 
realize self-completion, and responsibility 
for your own thoughts, beliefs and conduct, 
because that flies in the face of vicarious 
atonement, and endangers not only your 
own soul, but the office and revenues of the 
Cleric, which is far worse. 

Each of these outer guards plays directly 
into the hands of Mammon, and this Triple 
Alliance browbeats and bullies mankind, 
and retards the progress of the human 
race. 

If man will once shake himself free from 
both — nay, from the authority or domi- 
nance of all three of these tyrannies, hold 
up his head facing the east and the rising 
sun, take one long, full breath of God's 
free air and be warmed by the rays of the 
rising sun, he will feel that he has just been 



Education 155 

born into a new world, the world of all his 
brightest dreams and aspirations. 

Then let him read again the ' ' Sermon on 
the Mount, ' ' and find Jesus as he really is, 
for the first time, an elder, wiser, stronger, 
uplifting Brother, instead of a caricature 
devised by monks and hanging on a cross 
between heaven and earth for ages,* to 
excite tears and force revenue through sen- 
timentality, superstition and fear, breeding 
largely insincerity and hypocrisy. 

*This symbol of the man on the cross was intro- 
duced to Christianity in the time of Adrian 1st in 
the 8th century, A. D. For several hundred years the 
symbol representing Jesus crucified had been that 
of a lamb; "The lamb of good that taketh away the 
sin of the world.' ; Both concepts — the lamb and the 
man on the cross — were adapted from previous re- 
ligious and astronomical symbolisms, like almost all 
others held to be "sacred" by the church, the "vi- 
carious atonement' ' and the "virgin birth" being 
no exception. They help to constitute the politico- 
religious churchcraft of Papal Eome; valuable as- 
sets in fostering superstition and fear, and in se- 
curing revenue. Eead the list of relics in Catholic 
churches from "milk from the breast of the Virgin 
Mary" to a bottle containing the "darkness that 
came upon Egypt," to say nothing of the sample 
"wood of the cross," and "bones, etc., of Jesus," 
of which there are said to be a small carload. These 
things seem to go in the Twentieth Century almost 
as well as in the Fourteenth. 



156 Constructive Psychology 

The " middle,' ' thinking, reading classes 
today have reached just this station in 
human progress. 

Let them not be afraid or ashamed to 
avow it openly, for the world sadly needs 
their combined energy and influence. 

All of this should be the blossom and the 
fruit of the Constructive Principle in 
Nature, intelligently applied to the build- 
ing of character by personal effort. 

If we read intelligently the lessons of his- 
tory and the signs of the times, and so 
realize what is actually and rapidly being 
accomplished in this fair land where the 
latest experiment in self-government is 
being tried, only one consideration can save 
us from utter despair. 

This is the knowledge of the fact that 
this organized treason against mankind has 
everywhere else failed in time, and its 
authors and abettors have been held in 
contempt and execration. 

The normal higher evolution of mankind 
seems designed by both God and Nature. 



Education 157 

Its trend and its uplifting impulse saturate 
the foundations of all life, as gravitation 
underlies all matter, and pulls to a common 
center. 

Mankind may disregard it and wallow 
with the brute. He may oppose it, and 
degenerate, or die; but he cannot get rid 
of its judgments nor change its course. 

The crusade now so openly declared and 
well under way to "Make America Cath- 
olic" cannot possibly succeed and its work 
endure, for that would mean reversal of 
the laws of Nature and the intelligent 
designs of God. 

One thing this Clerical Octopus can do, 
that which it has never failed to do ; it can 
degrade, demoralize and impoverish a 
whole people; and between these, its igno- 
rant and superstitious victims and all other 
citizens, it can build a wall of suspicion, 
denunciation, persecution, strife and 
hatred, and blasphemously inscribe upon 
its banners the name of Jesus the Christ. 
It never once has failed to do this in fifteen 



158 Constructive Psychology 

hundred years of its baleful history among 
the people of the old world. 

The Church boasts that it " never for- 
gets an injury nor forgives an enemy, ' ' and 
wherever and whenever it has gained politi- 
cal power, which is now its declared pur- 
pose in America, it never once has failed 
to use that power to fill prisons with its 
helpless victims, and to torture and murder 
its accredited enemies. 

It can do for America what it has else- 
where done, and its work here is now well 
under way. 

The only question for us now to decide is, 
whether we are wise and humane enough 
and have the courage to stay its further 
encroachments, or whether we will wait 
till arson and civil war are inaugurated by 
its blind fanatics with the approval of a 
Torquemada bearing the title or the proxy 
of the "Vice-regent of God," and held to 
be "Infallible" by his degraded hordes. 

If the whole American people were 
aroused today and ready to act as one man, 



Education 159 

they would find the entrenchments of this 
greatest enemy of mankind on every hand, 
in the most unsuspected quarters. It would 
require at least the persistent and united 
work of a quarter of a century to dislodge 
them or loosen their clutch on the life of 
the nation. 

"0 Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How oft 
would I have gathered you as a hen gathers 
her brood under her wings, and ye would 
not." 

History is but the warning or encour- 
aging voice of God, echoing through all the 
past ; Prophecy, the lessons of history with 
hand upraised in warning pointing to the 
future. 

Liberty lives only while its hand is 
clasped with Duty, and through all the 
affairs of the life of men runs the fixed 
and unchangeable Law of Personal Respon- 
sibility. 

We must form our own standards of 
justice, equity and right. We must act, 



160 Constructive Psychology 

and we cannot possibly avoid the conse- 
quences. 

The real issues between the Parochial 
School and the Free Secular Public School 
ought to be very clearly defined so that 
no intelligent individual need be in the 
least doubt or confusion regarding them. 

The "living habits' ' of child or man 
ought to be such as to produce and main- 
tain growth, health and comfort of the 
physical body; and not deformity, disease 
and death. This includes food, baths, exer- 
cise, and fresh air, the work of mind or 
body. 

The body thus becomes the vehicle of 
life and the faithful servant of the Indi- 
vidual Intelligence. It promotes and 
secures normal evolution, long life and hap- 
piness. 

Education in all our free, secular or pub- 
lic schools now recognizes the above normal 
physical processes and natural laws. 

It is equally true and quite as important, 
that mental, emotional and volitional 



Education 161 

"habits" of child or man ought to be such 
as to promote and secure growth, health, 
rational volition and self-control of mind, 
and of the Individual Intelligence ; not con- 
fusion, dependence, fanaticism nor crime. 

Defective as our Free Schools still are 
in making clear the basic principles in 
education as to normal self-development 
and all future evolution of the Individual, 
no subject among educators excites more 
interest nor receives more attention and 
earnest effort than this at the present 
time. Ignorance and inefficiency are not 
perversity and devolution. 

When we come to the Parochial School 
the question is not only different, but every 
basic principle is completely reversed. 

In the first place, the normal evolution 
and highest good of the individual is 
entirely ignored. 

In the place of this stands that subtle, 
seductive, despotic Colossus, "Mother 
Church. ' ' 

The practical good of the individual is 



162 Constructive Psychology 

not only completely ignored, but it is ex- 
ploited as an asset of "Mother Church;" 
and as an offset, with an added fee, the 
individual is promised happiness in another 
world as the reward of obedience in this. 

Fear and superstition are the direct 
agencies fostered and employed with the 
masses, and in order to realize on these 
assets and agencies they must keep the 
people in ignorance. That is, they must 
' ' educate ' ' them in their own way. 

In the meantime the Pope and his agents 
know perfectly well that they really know 
no more of any future life than they do of 
the complexion of the "man in the moon." 

For purposes of securing obedience, 
massing votes and collecting revenue, 
Mother Church uses the people, young and 
old, as pawns in the great game of world 
politics and world conquest she is playing; 
and the only possible hope for the indi- 
vidual of the mass consists in breaking 
their chains. Liberal education alone will 
do this. Hence the Church directs all 



Education 163 

its measureless power against such educa- 
tion. 

The whole history of the Church and the 
Bulls of the Popes stand squarely in proof 
of the foregoing statements, and the pres- 
ent writer desires only to make that record 
clear and the issues plain and unmis- 
takable. 

By the dogma of Infallibility, not only 
are the edicts of the present Pope " infal- 
lible,' ' but all previous edicts of all other 
Popes, in spite of their contradictions, 
remain also infallible; so much does the 
Church presume on the gullibility of its 
victims. 

The Popes, with all their contradictions, 
hide behind the colossal bugaboo, "Mother 
Church," with Excathedra as the " little 
joker" or magic wand. 

As a single illustration among many that 
could be quoted, take this from Cardinal 
Manning : 

"The Church itself is the divine witness, 
preacher, judge of the revelation entrusted 



164 Constructive Psychology 

to it. There exists no other. There is no 
tribunal to which appeal from the Church 
can be made." 

During the Inquisition, if anyone of the 
90,000 victims of torture desired to "ap- 
peal" from the decision of the Inquisition 
to Mother Church, he could do so only 
through his inquisitorial torturer. 

This is the same kind of mercy and jus- 
tice you might expect if a ruffian were 
pounding and torturing you, and you were 
permitted to appeal for help only through 
the ruffian himself. He would of course 
conduct it in his own way, take his own 
time about it, and fix the report, if he ever 
made any, to suit himself. 

The Church is " infallible." It never 
changes and never errs, and this is its idea 
of justice. 

What about God ? The Church stands in 
His place and speaks in His name. 

What about Christ? The Pope is his 
direct agent and possesses his sole prerog- 
ative. 



Education 165 

What are justice, right and equity? 
Whatever the Church declares them to be, 
in keeping with its own ambitions and 
designs. 

What are sins and wickedness? First 
and last and all the time, disobedience to 
the Church. 

What is Atheism and what is blasphemy ? 
To deny the authority or question the divin- 
ity of the Church. This is the ' * unpardon- 
able sin." 

What are patriotism and good Citizen- 
ship? To obey without question the de- 
crees of the Church and vote for its inter- 
ests and under its dictates, early, late, 
solid, and all the time. 

Does all this sound like a tirade or a 
nightmare of the dark ages? 

Could anyone but an imbecile, an idiot, 
or a degenerate be imagined as sanction- 
ing such degrading despotism ? 

It is all as literally true in every detail 
and is the position of the Church today as 
it was in the days of the "Holy Inquisi- 



166 Constructive Psychology 

tion. " This any honest and intelligent 
person can easily demonstrate by reading 
the Encyclicals of the Popes, and current 
events down to this present day. 

Can anyone, thus informed, be in the 
least doubt what the Pope means by the 
word "Education," or how the clerics 
through the Parochial Schools are deter- 
mined to educate the children of "good 
Catholics ' ' and the rising generation in the 
United States ? Why they seek to destroy 
what they call our "Godless Public 
Schools?" Why they resort to the Jesuit- 
ical trick of getting "good Catholics" to 
constitute as fast and far as possible the 
majority of teachers in our free schools? 

Instead of a single position being herein 
misstated or overdrawn, the overwhelming 
mass of facts is barely touched upon, 
not even completely outlined. 

Sufficient has been shown to make it 
clear what the Church and Clericalism 
mean by "education" and why they hate 
our Free Schools and insist on their own. 



Education 167 

Eeal education along the lines of Con- 
structive Psychology, as heretofore out- 
lined, aims to give to every child his birth- 
right of Free Opportunity to become the 
noblest and best of citizens, and so to co- 
operate for the highest good of society. 

His own conscience, educated and illu- 
mined by reason and controlled by rational 
volition, is not only to enable him to judge 
as to what is right and wrong, but volun- 
tarily to choose the right and avoid the 
wrong. 

This he can never do educated by Clerics, 
except in a spasmodic or restricted sense, 
in spite of his early training, and with such 
glimpses as he may get of freedom and 
personal responsibility. 

The ignorant, superstitious child who is 
denied all self-reliance or freedom to act, 
can never be imagined capable of making 
the best citizen, except as he may free 
himself from the bondage of early train- 
ing. Children so educated are always piti- 
ably handicapped, to say the least. 



168 Constructive Psychology 

If we had not before us as object lessons 
today the whole of Southern Europe, and 
the ignorance, poverty and degradation 
seen everywhere there as the direct result 
of the rule of Mother Church, and so recog- 
nized today by these formerly "good Cath- 
olics " themselves; if we did not know of 
their efforts and determination to cast off 
this rule at any cost, we might find excuse 
for uncertainty or supineness. 

Atheism and anarchy, resentment and 
lawlessness, are the outcome of the policy 
of Mother Church, the bitter fruit of her 
educational system. 

How we can permit to be inaugurated 
here the same system and tolerate its in- 
fluence for a day, or permit it to undermine 
and destroy our free schools (the very key 
to the whole question), is one of the conun- 
drums that I dislike even to try to answer. 
Our position and attitude of ignorance and 
indifference is simply cowardly and pusil- 
lanimous, as compared with good citizen- 
ship. 



Education 169 

When we do awaken at last, as we surely 
must, in our then "virtuous indignation" 
we are likely to justify passion and violence 
in order to hide our real self-reproach and 
shame that we waited so long. 

The man or woman who as a child has 
been educated in free choice, voluntary self- 
control and obligation to self and to others, 
is a vital element for good in any com- 
munity, a center of power for the benefit of 
all alike. 

One educated by Clerics, permitted no 
free choice, kept in the bondage of fear, 
filled with degrading and self -abasing su- 
perstitions and his whole life dominated by 
the dogma of blind obedience, is simply a 
pawn to be played by despots in the game 
of life and political supremacy. 

Every sentiment of freedom, anything 
like an independent self-centered character, 
becomes thereby impossible. His own de- 
moralization is considered a fitting tribute 
to Mother Church. 

The Church thus devours her own chil- 



170 Constructive Psychology 

dren under the pretense of protecting theni, 
and in the end destroys herself. 

When the last tithe has been paid, the 
land filled with empty churches, the whole 
people utterly impoverished, as today in 
Southern Europe, the Church seeks ' ' other 
lands to conquer" and so perpetuates the 
demoralizing struggle century after cen- 
tury. 

This is why she is here. This is what 
she is doing in America today, and we are 
permitting her to do it without any suf- 
ficient protest. 

Patriotism for any "good Catholic" 
must not only include the Church but put 
the Church first before the State, and then 
if the State claims the least power over the 
Church, the Catholics must repudiate the 
State. This is the pressure everywhere 
used for the Union of Church and State. 
Patriotism thus becomes impossible. 



EGOMANIA, AND THE SUPERMAN 

What is to follow should be prefaced by 
the statement that no appeal is herein made 
to philosophy, metaphysics, theology, mys- 
ticism or revelation, as such. The appeal 
is directly to the common sense, observa- 
tion and general experience of mankind. 

By experiment, observation and experi- 
ence we arrive at a practical knowledge of 
things. 

By observation in action, and experience 
in use, we arrive at real values, and in no 
other way. 

Theories and beliefs may indeed point 
out lines of experiment, but they can never 
determine results. A catalogue of exploded 
theories would show a larger heap of refuse 
than any bomb-thrower could measure in a 
lifetime. The inventor of a new theory 
often makes first, the mistake of supposing 

171 



172 Constructive Psychology 

that it is altogether new; and next, 
imagines that it is a final trnth. The more 
completely he is satisfied on these points, 
the more likely is he to be altogether wrong. 

The movements, dissensions, interests 
and issues of the present time are rapidly 
narrowing down to a single point. This 
issue is made plain as that between Indi- 
vidualism and Collectivism; between the 
right of the individual to do as he pleases, 
and the claim of society to curtail his lib- 
erty and share in his individual resources. 

It is the old battle between autocracy 
and socialism that has been raging since 
time began. It makes not the least dif- 
ference whether we like such an issue or 
not. It is here and rapidly taking form, 
and being pushed to open combat with all 
the combined energy of the "will to live" 
and the desire to rule. 

Banners and slogans have, indeed, 
changed. The grace of God, divine rights, 
hereditary privileges, have largely disap- 
peared, and in their place are seen the ban 



Egomania, and the Superman 173 

ner of mammon, the centralization of power 
in other forms, the massing of votes, and 
political trickery. 

These issues have changed in nothing 
hut the names since the French Revolution, 
or since the Garden of Eden for that mat- 
ter, when (as a woman politician put it the 
other day) "Eve got on the first bat, and 
saw a snake that could talk and beguile. ' ' 

The Darwinian doctrine of the "strug- 
gle for existence in the midst of a hostile 
environment, ' ' and "the survival of the 
fittest" among the improved animals, such 
as human beings are declared to be, has. 
borne its fruit and gone to seed. 

One-third of the human race are said to 
die before their fifth year, to say nothing 
of the struggles of adult life. 

Certain writers, among whom Priedrich 
Nietzsche and Ernest Haeckel undoubtedly 
are entitled to the first place, have accepted 
the Darwinian doctrine as the beginning 
and the end. Man is simply an improved 
animal and nothing more. "What impulse 



174 Constructive Psychology 

or trend in the animal guides natural selec- 
tion, leads to improvement, or determines 
the line of ascent in the upward evolution 
beyond the will to live, the struggle for 
existence and the fact of the physical sur- 
vival of the fittest, they do not pretend to 
say. What element of discrimination and 
upward trend from beast to man guides 
natural and sexual selection they do not 
explain. 

As a simple matter of fact, the line of 
ascent from animal to man on the physical 
plane is no whit more clear or demonstrable 
with all its gaps and missing links, than 
the line of man's descent from something 
higher than himself. The push from the 
animal is no stronger than the pull from 
the angel, measured by all we actually know 
of man. 

It is no more evident that man is an im- 
proved animal than that he is a " fallen 
god." The "fallen god" can be quite as 
readily materialized as the "missing link," 



Egomania, and the Superman 175 

or as logically discerned from the trends 
of evolution. 

Evolution implies variation, differentia- 
tion and continual readjustment. Involu- 
tion implies permanency of type, completer 
adjustment and more perfect realization. 
Evolution tends always to greater diver- 
sity. Involution tends always to greater 
unity, completeness, selfhood. 

These are processes. They are the two 
terms of the life equation, and they are co- 
incident and complementary. 

The trend of higher evolution is pro- 
gressively involved from the supra-human 
plane, just as form and function are 
evolved from the sub-human. 

These values are exact and definite at 
any moment in the life of the individual, 
and the unknown quantity is determined by 
the exact measure in which the individual 
has eliminated the animal and realized his 
diviner potencies and powers. 

The ethical and spiritual status of the 
individual, his net value to himself and to 



176 Constructive Psychology 

humanity at any given point of his evolu- 
tion, are as definite as the weight of his 
physical body or the number of pounds 
avoirdupois he can lift. 

This is only another way of saying that 
man is a distinct personality as complete in 
himself, as such, as though he were alone 
in the universe. At death the equation is 
solved, so far as the present life is con- 
cerned. 

The individual equation is indeed com- 
plex, and compounded of many terms. But 
the result is one individual intelligence ; one 
man or woman ; one human soul. And the 
equation has been solved by man himself, 
whether he realizes it or not. He is, just 
what he is, neither more nor less. 

The problem given is that of a self-con- 
scious individualized Intelligence, with 
rational volition and personal responsibil- 
ity to determine what he is, what he can do, 
and what he can become by personal effort. 
The struggle for existence is now supple- 
mented by that for self -completion. 



Egomania, and the Superman 177 

Darwin had the grace and the intelli- 
gence to realize that he was dealing with a 
physical problem, while the monist and the 
egomaniac deny that there is any other. 

It is no more evident that man is a living 
animal or a material organism than that he 
is an individual intelligence, and the ascent 
of the one from the sub-human is no more 
apparent than the descent of the other from 
the supra-human. 

These materialistic writers may be taken 
on their own ground, on the basis of fact 
and common observation and experience 
of mankind, without appeal to philosophy, 
theology or revelation at all. 

In order that we may not belittle the 
whole subject at the outset and contemp- 
tuously throw it out of court, I quote the 
opening sentence from the introduction to 
Henry L. Mencken's "The Philosophy of 
Nietzsche, ' ' as follows : 

' ' The philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche 
and the music (and quasi music) of Eichard 
Strauss : Herein we have our modern sub- 



178 Constructive Psychology 

stitutes for Shakespeare and the musical 
glasses. There is no escaping Nietzsche. 
You may hold him a hissing and a mock- 
ing and lift your virtuous skirts as you pass 
him by, but his roar is in your ears and 
his blasphemies sink into your mind. He 
has colored the thought and literature, the 
speculation and theorizing, the politics and 
superstition of the time. He reigns as 
king in the German universities, where, 
since Luther's day, all the world's most 
painful thinking has been done, and his 
echoes tinkle harshly or faintly from Chi- 
cago to Mesopotamia. His ideas appear 
in the writings of men as unlike as Eoose- 
velt and Bernard Shaw. ' ' 

"The son of a preacher,' ' Mencken says, 
"as a child Nietzsche was holy: as a man 
he was the symbol and embodiment of all 
unholiness. ' ' 

Nietzsche's intellect was brilliant, scin- 
tillating, uncontrolled. The realm of his 
consciousness so far as intellectual per- 
cepts are concerned — his world of ideas — 



Egomania, and the Superman 179 

was quite inclusive. He had the wilfulness 
of a child, the audacity and recklessness of 
a brigand. 

Basing his theories on the Schopenhauer- 
ian doctrine of the "will to live," and the 
Darwinian idea of the "survival of the 
fittest," egotism and wilfulness dominated 
his conscious existence. Under this domi- 
nation, this egomania, he became utterly 
reckless. Nothing remained sacred. The 
superman, which he felt himself to be, 
should demonstrate his determination and 
his power to do as he pleased and trample 
everything he disliked under foot. This 
condition of mind and its inevitable results, 
are neither new nor strange to the alienist. 
Madhouses are full of such object lessons. 

Other people might doubt and question, 
but it was Nietzsche's prerogative to de- 
nounce and repudiate with scorn and con- 
tempt. 

The superman "must be supremely im- 
moral and unscrupulous. His must be the 
gospel of eternal defiance. He will be 



180 Constructive Psychology 

scornful, merciless, and supremely fit. He 
will be set free from man's fear of gods and 
of laws, just as man has been set free from 
the ape's fear of lions, and of open places." 
"Disregard your neighbors,' ' lie says; 
"man is something to be surpassed. Sur- 
pass yourself at the expense of your neigh- 
bor. What you cannot seize let no man give 
you." The superman in the struggle for 
existence asks and gives no quarter. 

Nietzsche believed, says Mencken, that 
man, while superior to all other animals 
because of his greater development, was, 
after all, merely an animal like the rest of 
them. He was the pioneer among modern 
inonists and is said to have proved the 
truth of morphological universality some 
years before Haeckel wrote his ' ' Monism, ' ' 
and "The Riddle of the Universe." 

"Judge a given action," says Nietzsche, 
"solely by its effect upon your own wel- 
fare. All notions of sin and virtue should 
be banished from the mind." "In itself," 
he says, "an act of injury, violation, 



Egomania, and the Superman 181 

exploitation or annihilation cannot be 
wrong. ' ' 

He was fond of picturing the ideal im- 
moralist as a magnificent blonde beast, in- 
nocent of virtue and sin, and knowing only 
good and bad. " Sympathy, ' ' he said, 
"stands in direct antithesis to the tonic 
passions which elevate the energy of human 
beings and increase their feeling of ef- 
ficiency and power. It is a depressant. 
Sympathy thwarts the law of development, 
of evolution, of the survival of the fittest. 
It preserves what is ripe for extinction. . . . 
It is both a multiplier of misery and a con- 
servator of misery. ' ' 

Of the eight declarations that have been 
by a stretch of courtesy called Nietzsche's 
philosophy, the following are the seventh 
and the eighth: 

' ' That all the ideas that grow out of such 
gods and religions, such, for example, as 
the Christian ideas of humility, of self- 
sacrifice and of brotherhood — are enemies 
of life too. ' ' 



182 Constructive Psychology 

1 l That human beings of the ruling ef- 
ficient class should reject all gods and reli- 
gions, and with them the morality at the 
bottom of them and the ideas which grow 
out of them, and restore to its ancient king- 
ship that primal instinct which enables 
every efficient individual to differentiate 
between the things which are beneficial to 
him and the things which are harmful. ' ' 

Thus is to arise the "splendid blonde 
beast "which he designates also the " super- 
man." It is the lingering echo of the 
legends of his Scandinavian race, Thor 
with his hammer, or Ukko of the Kalevala. 

Philosophy per se discerns a rational 
order, and undertakes to determine a log- 
ical sequence, i. e., law and harmony. There 
is neither rational order, harmony, se- 
quence nor law discernible in the writings 
of Nietzsche. He not only denies and de- 
nounces all philosophies, ethics, traditions 
and religions, but contradicts himself again 
and again. 

This is the source from which Haeckel 



Egomania, and the Superman 183 

derives his Monism, as a freer and more 
reckless interpretation of the doctrines of 
Darwin, and from which he presumes to 
solve "The Eiddle of the Universe.' ' 
Whatever he cannot explain, but which is 
inconvenient and troublesome, he simply 
denies dogmatically and rules out of court. 

Professor Huxley believed that man 
would have to be excepted from the law of 
natural selection. "The ethical progress 
of society," he said, "depends, not on imi- 
tating the cosmic process and still less in 
running away from it, but in combatting 
it." (Mencken, p. 140.) 

In his book, "The Idea of God," John 
Fiske says: "There are those who have 
indeed learned a lesson from Mephistoph- 
eles, the ' spirit that forever denies.' These 
are they that say in their hearts, ' There is 
no God, ' and ' congratulate ' themselves that 
they are going to die like the beasts. Bush- 
ing into the holiest arena of philosophy, 
even where angels fear to tread, they lay 
hold of each new discovery of science that 



184 Constructive Psychology 

modifies our view of the universe, and 
herald it as a crowning victory for the 
materialist — a victory which is ushering in 
the happy day when atheism is to be the 
creed of all men. It is the view of such 
philosophizers that the astronomer, the 
chemist, and the anatomist, whose aim is 
the dispassionate examination of evidence 
and the unbiased study of phenomena, may 
fitly utter the prayers, * Lord, save me from 
my friends!' " 

Professor Fiske further shows how 
natural selection in man will finally be sup- 
plemented by Divine selection in his higher 
evolution. 

We may safely leave monists like Haeckel 
to scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge, who, in 
his "Life and Matter," has already called 
him to account. 

God is still in His heavens, all is well 
with the world; and neither the "splendid 
blonde beast," nor atheism, nihilism, nor 
monism is the last word even of physical 
science, pure and simple. 



Egomania, and the Superman 185 

The distinction between simple egotism 
and egomania is well known to alienists. 
It is not a difference in degree, bnt a radi- 
cal difference in kind. It concerns the 
individual's self -consciousness ; his aware- 
ness of the self, and the non-self ; his abil- 
ity to measure values, and determine natu- 
ral relations and proportions. 

Egotism is an impulse, egomania a pas- 
sion, a frenzy, a disease. The egotist may 
be beaten at his game, acknowledge his de- 
feat, admit that he was wrong, change his 
tactics, or compromise. The egomaniac 
resents opposition, acknowledges no defeat, 
but becomes frenzied and often murderous 
under opposition and restraint. Here is 
the dominant idea, the insane impulse 
which he never questions. He loses all ef- 
fort or awareness of self-control. He does 
not propose for an instant that others shall 
control him, nor that he will control him- 
self. Here is perversity in place of rational 
volition. 

Nietzsche's intellect was keen. His 



186 Constructive Psychology 

awareness of percepts was remarkable. He 
would impress the observer that his intel- 
lect was brilliant, but he was utterly unable 
to grasp concepts. Belations, values, se- 
quences were entirely beyond him. 

His followers, by selecting assertions 
here and there in his writings, have patched 
together a so-called "philosophy." Many 
other philosophies, and of quite opposite 
meaning, might be gathered in the same 
way from the same source. 

Max Nordau has made this exceedingly 
plain in his analysis of Nietzsche and his 
writings, by hundreds of quotations there- 
from. Listen to this from Nietzsche's 
Zarathustra : 

"Man is wicked, so spake to me in con- 
solation all the wisest. Ah, if only it is yet 
true today! For wickedness is man's best 
strength. Man must become better and 
more wicked, so I teach. The greatest 
wickedness is necessary to the best of the 
over-man. It might be good for that 
preacher of little people that he suffered 



Egomania, and the Superman 187 

and bore the sins of man. But I rejoice 
in great sins as my great consolation.'' 

I refrain from quoting further from 
Nietzsche's references to Christianity 
and the Man of Sorrows. The devout 
Christian will find blasphemy on nearly 
every page. But, as stated in the begin- 
ning, I am not appealing to religion, but 
to common sense, and common experience 
of mankind. 

Judging from the few quotations I have 
made, those who are unfamiliar with the 
subject will naturally claim that too much 
importance is, even here, being given to 
the ravings of a lunatic. 

But if Nietzsche " reigns as king in the 
German universities," as Mencken says; if 
he has colored the whole thought of his time 
and given to Haeckel his Monism and to 
Bernard Shaw at least the slogan of the 
"Super-man," we shall be compelled to 
give the thing some attention. 

Haeckel finds the basis of his dogmatic 
Nihilism partly in the theory of physical 



188 Constructive Psychology 

evolution and partly in Nietzsche's diabo- 
lism. The first we may safely leave in the 
hands of scientists and the second in the 
hands of the alienists as evidence of per- 
version, degeneracy or insanity. 

Bernard Shaw belongs to another cate- 
gory entirely, and we shall come to him fur- 
ther on, remarking now only in passing that 
where Nietzsche noisily assails, denounces 
and denies Shaw dissects, analyzes and lays 
bare. 

Shaw would arrive at the truth and make 
it plain and unmistakable. Nietzsche de- 
nies that there is any such thing, though 
he also asserts that there is, provided you 
agree with him. Then, again, like Oscar 
Wilde, if many agreed with him he would 
suspect himself of error, for it is his ego- 
mania to differ from the herd and thereby 
prove himself superior. 

The imitators and followers of Nietzsche, 
as among the German students, are those 
in whom the blood in the loins and the in- 
stincts of the bully are strong. 



Egomania, and the Superman 189 

But this hot blood and folly of youth, 
largely engendered by the Bismarck 
regime, is likely to encourage dissipation 
and lead to degeneracy, particularly witlj 
free license of drink and sexual debauchery, 
after the removal of all moral restraint. 

They have adopted the slogan of the 
Pirates of the Levant : 1 1 Nothing is wrong, 
all is permissible. ' ' 

That a lunatic could have started such a 
crusade of vice and profligacy seems alto- 
gether incredible. That so-called scientists 
should sanction and seem to justify it seems 
no less remarkable. No one, even among 
Nietzsche's followers, doubts that he was 
insane. His worshipers admit that he was 
"crazy in spots." The alienist declares 
that he was never altogether sane. 

Now let us contemplate for a moment 
Nietzsche's super-man. 

A "splendid blonde beast/ ' to begin 
with. Conscience is repudiated. Kindness, 
charity, mercy, pity, compassion, sympathy 
are scorned and repudiated with contempt. 



190 Constructive Psychology 

Heartlessness, cruelty, greed, selfishness 
are lauded as not only commendable but 
essential for the power and progress of the 
super-man, separated from and standing 
above the herd as the ripe product of evo- 
lution. 

What sane man does not know that the 
human is essentially the humane? Bulwer's 
Margrave, in his ' ' Strange Story, ' ' soulless 
though he was, was a gentleman; and self- 
preservation and self-defense were his 
crowning passions. He might stand as an 
embodiment of Schopenhauer's "Will to 
live." To stay alive on earth was his am- 
bition, his crowning passion. He never 
dreamed of the super-man. He knew that 
death for him meant annihilation. 

Picture the physiognomy of Nietzsche's 
super-man. Eyes without one ray of hu- 
man kindness ; mouth, and teeth, and jaws, 
and chin expressing relentless determina- 
tion, pitiless, conscienceless, remorseless. 
Where can anyone imagine the "improved 
animal" as coming in? 



Egomania, and the Superman 191 

Not only does the physiognomy reveal 
the real characteristics of the individual, 
but we mould ourselves into every tissue 
of the human body. The lines upon the 
hand, the expression of the face, the tones 
of the voice, the gait in walking, the hand- 
writing — all these are what we make them. 
They are not fortuitous results from our 
environment, our heredity, nor the trend of 
race evolution. They are the net results of 
all these adjusted, precipitated and re- 
corded by the Individual Intelligence, by 
personal effort. 

God or Nature, law and evolution, have 
established the human race as the super- 
structure of individual life. Under these 
laws and conditions man has to perfect 
himself, and he must do this along lines 
that conserve the mass, or ignominiously 
perish. 

Newton's " first law" is universal and 
basic. Action and reaction are equal and 
opposite here as elsewhere, between the in- 



192 Constructive Psychology 

dividual and the whole, as between the atom 
and the mass. 

Nothing is truer nor more self-evident 
than that every step in the ascent of man 
has arisen from pushing back the instincts 
of the brute and recognizing and unfolding 
the humane impulses. 

Evolution does not imply the perpetua- 
tion of the brute. Whole races become ex- 
tinct and are replaced by something higher 
and better. The brute may indeed destroy 
his weaker fellow and by tooth and claw 
demonstrate his power and fitness to sur- 
vive, and when he is the last survivor he 
too disappears and his race is extinct. 

The individual is inseparable from the 
race. Individualism is inseparable from 
collectivism, and man must give and take. 
As the cells and organs of man are to his 
body as a whole, so is every individual to 
his race. There is a law of justice, pro- 
portion, harmony, equilibrium. To the hu- 
man body this means health. To society it 
means equity, peace, progress, evolution. 



Egomania, and the Superman 193 

The superman is not only inconceivable 
along other lines, bnt all effort to build or 
even imagine him along other lines contra- 
dicts itself at every step and belies every 
known fact of evolution. 

The seeming recklessness of God or Na- 
ture, regarding waste of individuals, must 
be explained in some other way than by the 
apotheosis of ignorance, defect, and dis- 
ease. The struggle for existence means the 
discovery and removal of these defects, and 
self-interest alone, when really understood, 
is a sufficient motive in the struggle to rec- 
ognize and eliminate. This means evolu- 
tion tried by the facts of common experi- 
ence and observation, and measured by 
common sense. Every one of intelligence 
knows this to be true. 

In his drama, "Man and Superman/ ' 
Shaw puts the following into the mouths of 
his actors : 

The Statue asks : c c And who the deuce 
is the Superman V 9 

The Devil replies : ' ' Oh, the latest fash- 



194 Constructive Psychology 

Ion among the Life Force fanatics. Did 
you not meet in heaven among the new ar- 
rivals that German-Polish madman — what 
was his name? Nietzsche I ' ' 

The Statue: " Never heard of him." 

The Devil: "Well, he came here first 
before he recovered his wits. I had some 
hopes of him, but he was a confirmed Life 
Force worshiper. It was he who raked up 
the Superman, who is as old as Promethe- 
us, and the twentieth century will run after 
this newest of the old crazes when it gets 
tired of the world, the flesh, and — your 
humble servant." 

" Superman is a good cry," replies the 
Statue, "and a good cry is half the battle. 
I should like to see this Nietzsche." 

The Devil: "Unfortunately he met 
Wagner here and had a quarrel with him. ' ' 

The Statue: "Quite right, too; Mozart 
for me." 

The Devil : ' ' Oh, it was not about music. 
Wagner once drifted into Life Force wor- 
ship and invented a Superman called Sieg- 



Egomania, and the Superman 195 

fried. But he came to his senses after- 
wards. So when they met here Nietzsche 
denounced him as a renegade, and Wagner 
wrote a pamphlet to prove that Nietzsche 
was a Jew, and it ended in Nietzsche's go- 
ing to heaven in a huff. ' ' 

And Shaw says in the chapter ' ' On Good 
Breeding,' ' in the " Eevolutionist 's Hand- 
book/ ' "The cry for the Superman did not 
begin with Nietzsche, nor will it end with 
his vogue. But it has always been silenced 
by the same question: What kind of a 
person is this Superman to be! * * * 
You must furnish a specification of the sort 
of a man you want. Unfortunately you do 
not know what sort of a man you want. 
# # # ^ n( j a ft er a n ? no market demand 

in the world takes the form of the exact 
technical specification of the article re- 
quired. * * * The proof of the Super- 
man will be in the living, and we shall find 
out how to produce him by the old method 
of trial and error, and not by waiting for a 
completely convincing prescription of his 



196 Constructive Psychology 

ingredients." (In other words, I may add, 
by experience.) 

"A nation," he says, " which revises its 
parish councils once in three years, but will 
not revise its articles of religion once in 
three hundred, even when these articles 
avowedly began as a political compromise 
dictated by Mr. Facing-Both-Ways, is a 
nation that needs remaking. Our only 
hope, then, is in Evolution." 

Shaw nowhere repudiates conscience nor 
compassion, nor ridicules virtue nor re- 
ligion. His language is chaste, though his 
meaning is very plain. He does lay bare 
that smug pretense to virtue and holiness, 
that outward conformity to custom and 
respectability, the hollo wness, conceit and 
hypocrisy of Mrs. Grundy, whether mas- 
querading under the name of religion, 
morality or good form; and those caught 
' ' dead to rights ' ' make haste to charge him 
with immorality and with attacking relig- 
ion. He shows very clearly that the Super- 
man must depend for recognition entirely 



Egomania, and the Superman 197 

on what he is, and what he does, and not on 
pretense, outward professions and con- 
formity. 

Measured by the same standards, Shaw 
is healthy and sane, while Nietzsche was 
diseased and deranged. The light of intel- 
ligence in Shaw is as keen and penetrating 
as was that of Nietzsche, and it beams with 
a steady glow that reveals many a hidden 
truth or concealed abomination. The sparks 
from Nietzsche 's circuit might splutter and 
blind the observer, and reveal nothing co- 
herent nor constructive, but a phantasma- 
goria of dancing imps, distorted shadows, 
broken fragments, overturned altars and 
profane confusion and destruction, with a 
splendid "Blonde Beast," half devil and 
half man, dancing a kankan in the midst. 

Nietzsche is a nightmare from which the 
sleeper will wake in a new Inferno. Shaw's 
Superman is a dream of a new Arcadia, re- 
mote indeed, yet possible, as he says, as the 
result of higher evolution, when in spirit 
and in truth man improves upon and rises 



198 Constructive Psychology 

above himself by personal effort and ac- 
tual experience. Shaw is an architect, a 
builder; Nietzsche a scavenger and a de- 
stroyer. 

Appealing still to common sense and in- 
dividual intelligence, I may say that the 
method of this higher evolution is not far 
to seek. It does not bother itself with meta- 
physics nor philosophy, nor does it formu- 
late theories. It relies on facts. It is 
pragmatic to the last degree. 

Ask any fair-minded intelligent man if 
self-control is not an element of strength, 
enabling him who possesses it to use his 
own powers wisely and well if he chooses, 
or most efficiently, regardless of motive and 
aim. 

Self-control is an element of power. 
Rational volition is another means to 
power, the exercise of the will under dic- 
tates of reason. He who is thus master of 
himself and capable of rational volition has 
improved immensely, not only on the ani- 
mal, but on himself; and the effort and 



Egomania, and the Superman 199 

discipline by which these powers have been 
acquired produce a marked tendency to 
equity and justice. 

Even expediency and self-interest will 
show him that injustice does not pay, and 
that he cannot deliberately injure another 
without injuring himself. This does not 
exclude morals; it confirms and necessi- 
tates the recognition of them. 

Suppose that the individual, as a child, 
is taught to recognize his own personal 
responsibility. Within quite a large area 
he can do as he pleases, but he must take 
the consequences. The intellect of the child 
is far more clear and acute than is gener- 
ally appreciated, or credited. 

Kecently a boy of twelve had quite a 
craze for playing marbles "for keeps.' ' 
His parents said "no,' ' and his face showed 
rebellion. But when he was told that he 
might play "for keeps" all he pleased, 
provided he would let the other fellow keep 
all he won and be good-natured about it, 
but return all he himself won, as not his 



200 Constructive Psychology 

but only borrowed, you should have seen 
the quick intelligence in his face. ' ' I guess 
I don't care to 'play for keeps' after all," 
he said. 

The trouble is, we teach and profess 
ivords that really have little practical 
meaning. 

These few simple principles lie at the 
basis and are the foundation of all that 
we call morals, and the facts of experience 
so derived constitute the science of ethics. 
Nietzsche denied and repudiated every one 
of them. Self-will, regardless of results or 
consequences, is not self-control. They 
serve, and also command and triumph, who 
know how and when to wait, no less than 
when and how to act. 

Nietzsche also repudiated rational voli- 
tion and personal responsibility, and that 
is where egomania came in. Will, with him, 
was not a poiver, but a reasonless, frenzied 
impulse, a blind passion of destruction to 
all and everything that stood in his way, 
and ended by destroying himself. 



Egomania, and the Superman 201 

It is not our religions nor codes of ethics 
alone that have withheld humanity from 
relapsing to barbarism. These have one 
and all been deductions from experience 
and observation. It is this Constructive 
Principle laid deep in the nature of man, 
whether recognized or not, that has pro- 
vided for and determined his higher 
evolution. 

But some one makes haste to say, ' ' Then 
you repudiate or ignore revelation and re- 
ligion. ' ' By no means. We merely change 
the basis, from ignorance, superstition and 
fear — whether of gods, devils, angels or 
men — to a foundation of fact, experience 
and law. Eeligion begins where these are 
recognized, and the superstructure hereon 
reared will not only be the Religion of 
Humanity, but it will give such an uplift to 
man as superstition never imagined nor 
dreamed of. 

The real Superman will not be the crea- 
tion of egomania, nor of creed and dogma, 
heralded by superstition and safeguarded 



202 Constructive Psychology 

by fear and persecution. He will demon- 
strate his power by taking all men by the 
hand as a father takes his little children 
and lifting them up towards his own plane 
of beneficence and love. 

Bernard Shaw says truthfully that the 
Superman must be the result of the higher 
evolution; a fact demonstrated by work, 
and not a fad nor a fancy, not a conven- 
tionality nor a cloak for all manner of 
uncharity and hypocrisy. 

True religion has nothing to fear from 
the egomania of Nietzsche, the monistic 
nihilism of Haeckel, nor the brilliant anal- 
ysis and scathing expositions of Bernard 
Shaw. Its one great enemy is the cloak of 
insincerity and hypocrisy, and the absurdi- 
ties of superstition in which it even yet is 
enshrouded. Divested of these, it would be 
like our Statue of Liberty, enlightening the 
world; and the Superman, always no less 
divine than human, leading the way. If a 
Superman were impossible, no one could 
have imagined a caricature nor a counter- 



Egomania, and the Superman 203 

feit. A counterfeit always presupposes a 
genuine coin. 

Notwithstanding all our boasted prog- 
ress and enlightenment, there still is mani- 
fest the fear that science is the enemy of 
religion. It is being rapidly perceived and 
demonstrated, however, that dogmatic ma- 
terialism and nihilism are as false to any 
true science, as superstition, fear and 
dogmatism are to true religion. 

The really advanced scientists, like 
Lodge and Thompson, are no longer perse- 
cuted, while the Church is compelled to 
excommunicate its brightest lights or re- 
form its creed. 

True science rests on facts and recog- 
nizes law, order and harmony. And as 
these are demonstrable, or self-evident, 
they are upheld by both God and Nature. 

Here, if anywhere, lies the foundation 
and the perpetuity of true Religion, a Uni- 
versal Religion, the Religion of Humanity. 
Here lies the promise and the potency of 
the Superman, as an orderly evolution and 



204 Constructive Psychology 

not as an apotheosis of the beast, nor as a 
roaring and blatant egomaniac. 

Natural Science recognizes here the Con- 
structive Principle in human evolution. It 
builds from beast to man and from man to 
God. Egomania is its exact antithesis. It 
is destructive and not constructive, and is 
known to science as atavism and 
degeneracy. 

Only the thoughtless, the ignorant, the 
degenerate or the insane overlook or con- 
fuse these well-defined and everywhere 
manifest principles which are as plain as 
light and darkness to the common expe- 
rience of mankind. 

When the highest group of the improved 
animal emerged upon the human plane, ac- 
cording to the theory of evolution, the or- 
ganic center of life and intelligence, 
working still under the law of constructive 
psychology, began to realize its own powers 
and possibilities. Consciousness, now sym- 
bolized by a circle, had "returned into it- 



Egomania, and the Superman 205 

self. ' ' This was the dawn of self -conscious- 
ness — the recognition of self and the non- 
self. 

The struggle for existence included now 
personal effort and the struggle for self- 
perfection. As the life impulse came from 
below, so this dawning perception came 
from above. If the life impulse is said to 
saturate the developing ego, this higher 
impulse may be said to overshadow it. 

This evolutionary impulse, deep-seated 
as the life principle itself, means personal 
effort for higher and still higher adjust- 
ment. In strict keeping and the closest 
analogy with this theory, a point will be 
reached when the improved and ever im- 
proving man will emerge from the human 
plane as he did from the animal, and recog- 
nize his kinship with the still higher, the 
constructive principle, running like a divine 
thread from beginning to end — as Dryden 
puts it, — "The diapason ending full in 
man ; ' ' or as J. G. Holland, the poet, said : 



206 Constructive Psychology 

' ' From hand to hand life's cup is passed 
Up being 's piled gradation 
Till men to angels yield at last 
The rich collation. ' ' 

How can anyone fail to see here im- 
bedded deep in Nature and working out 
in the higher evolution a real Superman! 
It is the problem of self-perfection in Indi- 
vidual Life, and it cannot be at cross- 
purposes with itself. Man cannot rise by 
trampling others down. All that we know 
of even the chemistry of atoms belies such 
a crude idea. The mass is the sum of the 
attractions, harmonies and equilibrium of 
each and every atom. 

In the face of these plain facts and mani- 
fest principles in evolution, all religions, 
codes of ethics and moral philosophies rep- 
resent the efforts of men, usually advanced 
men, to grasp and formulate these princi- 
ples which, by intuition, they more or less 
clearly perceive. 



Egomania, and the Superman 207 

Measured by the standards of their own 
time, Zarathustra, Confucius, Laotse, 
Christna and Buddha, represented Super- 
men. That subsequent commentators over- 
awed by their superiority should have 
shrouded them in mystery and read into 
their lives miraculous elements, seems not 
only natural but inevitable. 

Jesus of Nazareth remains no less the 
Superman when it is discerned that his 
divinity was the result of normal and 
higher evolution, a promise and a potency 
to the whole human race. The miracle and 
the mystery in interpretation favor only 
superstition, give birth at last to creed and 
dogma, and prevent the truth from follow- 
ing the lines of least resistance in 
enlightening the world. 

The Superman is not only an improved 
animal, but, at last, a perfected human 
being; and the perfection of his humanity 
means the dawn and the development of his 
divinity. 



208 Constructive Psychology 

1 ' Yet I reckon through the ages 
One increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened 
With the process of the suns." 



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